! LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

, Glyan Cnptjngiii I^a. 

! ,Slio"il\iA-fe. 

i 



i LNITI'l) STATICS OF AMEIIIC'A, 



EDUCATION 



BY 



N. RUSSELL MIDDLETON, 



AUTHOR OF 



The A Uegory of Plato and other Essays 
in Prose and Verse.'''' 



EDITR;pf*^feY HIS SON, 

N. R. MIDDLETON, Jr. 




CHARLESTON. S. C. 

Walker, Evans & Cogswell Company, Publishers, 
3 and 5 Broad and 117 East Bay Streets, 
1893. 




« 




Copyright, 1893. 

N. II. MlDDLETON. 



TO THK 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 
BY THE EDITOF. 



PREFACE. 



Not until after arranging the Essays which consti- 
tute this volume, for publication in their present form, 
did I determine upon the name of the Book. I had 
placed that on ''Education'' at the beginning, and, as 
the succeeding Essays are extentions, demonstrations 
and amplifications of the first, its name seemed not 
an inappropriate title to the volume. 

Editor. 



li 



The attention of the reader is called to the follow- 
ing typographical errors : 



Page 


Line 




II 


18 


Read ; after failures for , 


55 


I 


" Vasa for Vassa. 


68 


10 


" ambiguous for ambiguou. 


162 


I 


" skilful for skilful. 


233 


9 


Christ for Chris. 


234 


16 


" troubles for roubles. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Education 1 

Virtue 16 

HoNOB 29 , 

Liberty 39 

Chivalry 62 

Science and Eeeigmon 90 

The Phenomenal and the Real 121 

Miracle 140 

Law the Remedy for the Evils of Life- 
Human Law 156 

Divine Law 174 

Good and Evil 196 

Memoranda and Observations 230 

A Colloquy 247 



KDUCATION. 



Among enlightened nations the subject ot Educa- 
tion becomes every day more important, men 
are beginning to feel, — they have been brought by 
the most startling and disastrous experiences to 
feel — that it is fundamental, that it lies at the root, 
not only of individual, but of social and national 
prosperity. Nor has this been a barren or fruitless 
persuasion; vast sums have been expended, vigorous 
efforts have been exerted, and heroic sacrifices have 
been endured in the cause of education. Govern- 
ments have included it within the scope of their re- 
sponsibility, and high-minded men have consecrated 
their accumulations to its diffusion. It is well that 
this should be so ; it is well that the development of 
mind and character should keep pace, to some ex- 
tent, at least, with commercial enterprise and material 
aggrandizement, for assuredly the refinements of 
civilization would afford no permanent or real advan- 



2 



Education. 



tage if they did not involve in their progress both 
mental and moral culture. 

But while there is no difference of opinion upon this 
point, while all thinking men agree as to the necessity 
for education,there are scarcely any two who are of one 
mind as to the object and the mode. I desire to say 
a few words upon this interesting topic, and, as 
scientific investigation necessarily involves intelligent 
division, I propose to consider the question under 
three heads : The subject^ the method and the result^ 
and I invoke, in aid of the discussion, that superhu- 
man wisdom which it plainly demands. 

The subject^ a rational being ; a being created for 
moral purposes, and ushered into existence under 
such a condition of equilibrium between two op- 
posing elements, as to leave the choice in his own 
hands, and thus make him the real arbiter of his own 
destiny. 

The metaphysical enquiries connected with the 
freedom of the will, its nature and extent, do not af- 
fect the present question ; whoever is disposed to deny 
the postulate is at liberty to try the experiment and 
act, if he sees fit, as an irrational and irrespon- 



hdiication. 



3 



sible being, but all intelligent intercourse between 
human beings presupposes moral responsibility, and 
it is a mere waste of time, in a serious discussion, to 
attempt to prove it. 

But while this characteristic of humanity is gener- 
ally acknowledged, it is not always appreciated or 
understood. There are those who look upon their 
moral status and the difficulties which it involves as 
a gratuitous and arbitrary exertion of divine power, 
instituted wholly in the interest of the divine honor^ 
and in furtherance of the divine aggrandizement. This 
is simply the application of our human experience 
to superhuman conditions of existence ; it is a trans- 
ference of finite necessities to infinite being ; it is un- 
dertaking to speak of the absolute from assumed 
analogies in the relative; it is all pure assumption^ 
and contrary to the real probabilities of the case. 

There is no want in the Deity ; he has no needs^ 
nor personal desires, nor personal interests of any 
kind to consult ; he cannot, by any automatic act of his 
creatures, be made either greater or happier than he is, 
self-love can have no place in his consciousness, be- 
cause there is no room for its presence, and no field 



4 



Education, 



for its exercise. The thoughts, provisions and affec- 
tions of the Deity are, from the necessity of the case, 
wholly objective ; his being is one continual efflux 
of power, issuing in existence, both mental and ma* 
terial ; one of the forms of that existence — the form 
which it assumes in the personality of man — is moral 
life — life imparted with certain limitations, and for 
certain purposes ; attached to that life is such a free- 
dom of will as is necessary to indicate the character 
and fix the status of responsible intelligences ; a 
freedom limited by the necessity of the case, and 
enjoyed by permission ; not absolute, but defined and 
appropriated. 

Such is man, an intelligent agent, in perfect equi- 
librium between good and evil, and free therefore to 
choose between them. What more than this can 
man require, not only for perfect contentment with 
his lot, but for gratitude and exultation in accept-* 
ing it? 

Let us bring the question to a practical test ; let 
observation and experience vindicate the benignity of 
the Creator in the moral department of his creation ; 
what do we see in looking around us ? What do we 



Education. 



5 



feel forever within ? The ceaseless pressure of life 
upon the limitations which encompass it ; man every 
where struggling, discontented, seeking higher and 
better things for himself ; beating against his prison 
bars or madly at strife with his fellow under a vague 
impression of hinderance from without, seeking rest 
and finding none. And why is it that he finds no 
rest? Why is it that in the midst of this limitless 
creation, surrounded by countless ministrations of 
good, with every appetite gratified and every passion 
appropriately provided for, there is never, for one sol- 
itary moment of his progressive existence, a 
pause of satisfaction, a wayside inn, a bower of re- 
pose? Is there no significance in the fact that the 
policemen of time are ever at hand, in the 
crowded thoroughfare, to urge on the loiterer and 
compel him to advance. Does this sense of pressure, 
this restless turning of the giant under the superin- 
cumbent weight of the actual give no hint of his true 
nature and his ultimate destiny ? Why is it that, 
surrounded by all the appliances of wealth and all 
the satisfactions of power and all the enticements of 
luxury, man turns his back resolutely upon the 



6 



Education, 



whole and seeks liberty and expansion in arctic snows 
or tropical deserts, thankful to escape from inertia 
by grappling even with death ? 

The answer has been given by a thousand tongues, 
in a thousand forms, in prose and in poetry, in 
science and in song ; but it is ever the same unfaltering 
reply : there is in man something higher than man ; 
a superhuman consciousness inspires, a superhuman 
energy impels him, and he can never rest until the 
craving of his higher nature has been satisfied, and 
the constituents of his bemg have been crystalized 
into a higher form of unity and beauty : man has 
been introduced into relative and circumscribed ex- 
istence, not as a finality, not as the true sphere of his 
development and the ultimate scope of his powers, 
but simply as a condition of preliminary training, and 
the moment he regards it as an end, the moment 
he limits his responsibilities and his satisfactions by 
material and relative considerations, he descends 
from his allotted platform, forfeits his appointed rank 
and surrenders the patent of his true nobility. Let 
him not then decline for a moment the struggle which 
awaits him, let him not consent to surrender his birth- 



Education, 



7 



right for any pressure either of fear or desire, let not 
any mock humility or false modesty shelter him from 
the disgrace of sinking, in indolence and cowardice, 
the gloriefi of his magnificent inheritance. He is 
man ; it is well that he should remember his native 
destitution, but it is at his peril that he forgets his 
inherited grandeur. Standing as he does midway 
between heaven and hell ; centering in his personality 
their infinite antagonism; suspending upon his will 
their eternal issues ; giving audience to their ministers 
and passing judgment upon their claims; what is 
there, what can there be, among'created intelligences, 
higher than a moral being conscious of his morality 
and recognizing its true significance ? Said one, upon 
whose oracular deliverances I once hung with breath- 
less attention (and I wish I could repeat his very 
words, for there was in them a force which I cannot 
hope to impart), I never saw an angel ; I know 
nothing experimentally of those superhuman intelli- 
gences ; but I have seen a man, and I have no words 
to express the grandeur of that sight ; alone in the 
midst of enemies ; revilers and detractors all 
around ; every weapon, that petty malice could invent 



8 



Education. 



or malignant hate supply, discharged against him ; 
friends debauched; foes triumphant; he stood, calm 
amidst the uproar, unquivering, unblenching, the 
master of the storm. It was man but it was some- 
thing more than man, and I bowed before a spirit 
in which the Deity had manifestly taken up his 
abode." 

I have no controversy with those who love to dwell 
upon the other side of the picture. If, in any case, 
there is a felt necessity for humiliation, if, by a weak 
and unauthorized act of appropriation, man forgets, 
in the contemplation of his powers, the source from 
which he has derived them and becomes insolent and 
wanton, it may be necessary, in very kindness, to 
pluck from him his borrowed robes and leave him, 
for a time, to his native destitution. But this is after 
all but a half truth and needs a supplement to make 
it perfect, for while mortification and shame may stim- 
ulate to effort, it is self-respect alone that can grasp 
possession ; it is not when I think of my human lim- 
itations, but when I remember my divine extraction, 
that I can claim with confidence a royal inheritance, 
and of this I am well assured, that it is when I best 



Education, 



9 



appreciate the nobility of that inheritance, that I most 
thoroughly recognize my own shortcoming. 

We are shocked at the sight of human degrada- 
tion ; the Neros and Caligulas, the Borgias and 
deMontforts of history seem to involve, both in their 
origin and their end» a malignant influence ; but why 
are we shocked? Why do we utter an involuntary 
protest against these monsters and disavow them as 
the exponents of their race ? Why do we instinctively 
and peremptorily point to another picture, illustrating, 
for our encouragement, the records of the Scions and 
the Platos, the Oberlins and the Fenelons, whose 
lives and persons seem to shroud, by an almost trans- 
parent veil, the lineaments of divinity ? Why is it, that 
through the long lapse of intervening ages, not one 
solitary voice has ever dared to lift itself in calumny 
against the divine man to whom vve are permitted to 
point as the exponent of our wills and the true type of 
our race? It is from a divine intuition ; it is because man 
is conscious of harboring a germ of immortality, and 
knows that he is responsible for its nurture, and while 
he feels the pressure, is alive to the honor of that 
responsibility. Yes ! we may sink into sensuality if 



10 



Education, 



we will ; we may suffer ourselves to be overpowered 
by the delusions of this relative and phenomenal ex- 
istence; we may struggle for tinsel crowns and van- 
ishing possessions and servile power; but there is a 
protest going on within which proclaims our pater- 
nity and demands our inheritance. 

If these things are so, then the method of our Ed- 
ucation must be in accordance with the truth which 
they imply, that is, a method which recognizes the 
true nature of man, his origin and his end ; anything 
short of this must end in ultimate failure. To edu- 
cate man as if three score years and ten were the 
boundary of his existence, as if the satisfactions of 
his phenomenal life were the limit of his enjoyment 
and the measure of his duty, would result in a col- 
lapse involving the very interests we were endeavor- 
ing to promote ; it is as impossible to secure these 
minor interests without reference to the greater as it 
would be to apprehend locomotion without space or 
succession without duration. The metaphysical dis- 
tinction of Cousin between the logical and chrono- 
logical order of sequence applies in its full force to 
the philosophy of education. Secure in your subject 



Education. 



11 



the principles of truth, honor, virtue and accounta- 
bility, and you have a solid foundation for success in 
any field of human development in which his efforts 
may be expended ; give a man true views of his 
maker, let him know what he has to fall back upon 
when his own virtue fails him, his own power is ex- 
hausted and his social experiences have sickened 
him with life and made him an abhorrence to himself, 
and you bring at once into active and beneficent op- 
eration the virtues of patience, courage, industry and 
perseverence, which lie at the root of all success, 
whether in the nurture of a plant or the acquirement 
of a profession, whether in the solution of a problem 
or the government of a nation. This want of thor- 
oughness, this inability to face the truth, this horror 
in the presence of absolute verities, which exhibit 
themselves on every side, are the cause of all our 
disastrous failures , temporary success, immediate 
practical results, low aims and narrow views drag 
down to the level of the actual the nature which was 
formed to converse with the real, and the shouts of 
a thoughtless multitude are accepted as the utterance 
of a divine sanction. 



12 



Education^ 



But the process through which the moral being 
must pass on to its perfection is a very different one 
from this, its defects are radical and so must be the 
remedy ; the warfare between the lower and the 
higher nature is internecine ; from the very nature of 
the case there can be no compromise ; material inter- 
ests and sensual passions weigh like lead upon the 
spirit and bind its powers and check its aspirations, 
until it ceases to assert itself and withdraws from the 
discouraging contest It is manifest then, that the 
field of this deadly encounter cannot be a bed of 
roses ; the very condition upon which it is occupied 
is a condition of trial, ancl the severity of the test is 
in proportion to the magnitude of the result. Is it 
in accordance with any analogy, human or divine, 
that a created being should rise into a higher form of 
existence without effort, without an experience in 
which energies and agonies are inevitably involved? 

Trial ! why the very machinery of human industry, 
the very machinery of human production must be sub- 
jected to trial ; you cannot discharge a rifle or wield 
a sword or fill a boiler, until you have proved their 
qualities by a maximum test; and in the higher 



Ediicaiioii, 



13 



walks of life, upon the loftier platform of intelligent 
existence, shall the agent march unchallenged into 
the field of his operations? Shall he give no ac- 
count of his powers, and acknowledge no respon- 
sibility for his freedom ? Is it nothing that we are 
capable of honor, that we can apprehend truth, that 
we can attain to purity, and shall we be required to 
give no proof of our estimate of these priceless qual- 
ities ? Indeed it is difficult to imagine how we could 
either appropriate or display them, if there were no 
background of difficulty to project them upon the 
canvass. It is at this point and under these condi- 
tions that man is permitted to appropriate his virtue ; it 
is his, not by inherent right, not by actual possession, 
not by perfect practice, but by a choice under difficul- 
ties ; a choice put to the severest test and maintained 
under the severest pressure that his nature is capable 
of enduring. Here lies the solution of the moral 
problem, the clue to the labyrinth of moral existence, 
which the Theseus — the true hero — accepts and re- 
tains until " death is swallowed up in victory.'^ 

What then is the result ? It grows naturally and in- 
evitably out of the antecedents, A moral being, who 



14 



Education. 



has been introduced by the appropriate education of 
of his powers into the higher forms of spiritual life, 
must, from the necessity of the case, become noble 
and glorious. A man, who by the reception and cul*- 
tivation of divine influences in his nature has resisted 
the enticements of sense and the seductions of flat- 
tery and the frowns of power, has silently but effectu- 
ally appropriated the constituents of immortality, 
Through whatever depths of misery he may have 
passed ; whatever defilements may have attached 
themselves to his outer garments ; however oppressed 
or neglected or despised he may have been in this 
relative condition of existence, he is absolutely noble ; 
he has taken up and absorbed into his being the 
elements of real life ; he is released from the seduc- 
tions of the phenomenal and the entanglements of 
the relative, and become naturalized in the region of 
the real and the absolute ; and surely it is a glorious 
emancipation ; to have settled, once and forever, the 
relative value of things, to have organized existence 
by a fundamental and scientific classification, to have 
mastered, not only the logic of words and the logic 
of ideas, but the logic of facts and the logic of events ; 



Education. 



15 



to have assigned their appropriate place and affixed 
their real value to the apparently discordant elements 
of our perplexing experience ; to understand the 
non-entity of the apparent, the vanity of the transi- 
tory, and the feebleness of the derived ; to stand 
thus, in the simple consciousness of a divine affilia- 
tion, and look through the apparent to the real 
source of safety and power ; I do not see what more 
can be demanded by a rational being conscious of 
imperfection and struggling to shake it off. 



16 



Education. 



VIRTUE. 



Virtue — Manhood — Courage — and is it not fitly 
named? Who, that has made any efforts towards self- 
culture and self-purification, can fail to see the beauty 
and the appropriateness of the term, as applied to the 
development and exercise of our higher nature? and 
who, that has had any experience of the result of 
those efforts, can cease to be grateful, that he has 
been permitted and required to make them. 

The sense of victory, in such a contest as is im- 
plied in the struggle with our selfish passions, is, in 
itself, an ample reward for all the trials it involves ; 
but, when there is superadded the consequences of 
that victory ; when we come to realize, not only vic- 
tory, but advance, and that advance in our very na- 
ture itself, that we actually are higher and nobler 
beings than we were, living a higher life, breathing a 
purer air, unaffected by that which once annoyed, and 
uninfluenced by that which once allured us, it will re- 



Virtue. 



17 



quire no effort, either of mind or will, to apply to the 
process the most exalted term which our vocabulary 
can furnish. It is a matter for which, I think, we have 
cause to congratulate ourselves, that the word, which 
has been adopted to express our highest exaltation, 
is one which, at the same time, affirms and challenges 
our true nobility. 

We do not speak of human rectitude as angelic or 
divine ; when we use these terms we intend to speak 
hyperbolically, but we call it virtue — manhood ; and 
I rejoice that it is so ; I rejoice that human nature, 
with all its degraded propensities, can still maintain 
its conscious nobility, and recognize its grand re- 
sponsibility. 

In every age of the world it has been so, and in the 
most degraded forms of humanity ; a standard of some 
kind is established, and that standard always involves 
effort, struggle, for the maintenance of which courage 
is needed, and the exercise of that courage is virtue. 
In the savage it is the triumph over his physical na-- 
ture, in the endurance of pain, and the defiance of 
death, for his personal protection and comfort. 
Ascending a step higher in the scale of civilization, 



18 



Education, 



we find friendship and patriotism the motives of vir^ 
tue, as was the case among the Greeks and Romans, 
until we come, in Christian ethics, to self-abnegation, 
in consideration of the needs of sentient existence in 
every department of creation ; virtue, in that system, 
being understood to imply the possession and exer- 
cise of all those qualities which constitute the per- 
fection of rational existence. 

It would, at first, seem strange, that the Christian 
standard should have any use for a word, which ex- 
presses manhood in the lower forms of human develop- 
ment ; in other words, that it should require any 
courage to practice virtue, in the Christian sense of 
the term. 

Experience, however, soon convinces us of its ap-- 
propriateness, and not only so, but, that the courage 
is in accordance with the virtue, that it is as far above 
all other courage, as the virtue is above other virtue. 

Think of the isolation, of the misapprehension, of 
the misrepresentation ; think of the severe mental 
pressure involved in the nice distinctions which a sense 
of duty demands ; think of the heart-sickening con- 
sciousness of terrible shortcomings, and of the over- 



Virtue, 



19 



whelming advantage which those shortcomings afford 
to the unprincipled and the censorious ; think of the 
tremendous difficulty involved in the distinction be- 
tween humility and self-abasement, between self-re- 
spect and pride, between firmness and obstinacy; 
think of present, pressing, palpable necessity and the 
dim vision of a supply escaping in the distance from 
the arms of a relaxing faith ; think of being sent alone 
and unarmed, to march, with a hostile banner through 
an armed and irritated mob ; and then talk about 
worldly heroes and worldly courage. Think of the 
loneliness, of the entire lack of encouragement, of 
sympathy, of applause. How powerful and palpable 
must be the apprehension of a higher life, and of a 
divine presence, to enable us to stand, for one mo- 
ment, under the neglect, the disapproval, the contempt 
of the wise and the respectable and the powerful 
around us ; to feel, that in uttering our solemn con- 
victions, and in meeting our unavoidable responsibili- 
ties, we are underlying the old insinuated sneer, 
^'what will this babbler say?" or, if the utterance, be 
too true and too powerful to be questioned, then to 
encounter that other stealthy thrust, "we know this 



20 



Education. 



fellow whence he is." Nor is this the utmost extent 
of the trial, to which virtue is necessarily subjected ; 
all this is only external, it does not touch our true 
life, and it affects us, only so far as we are under 
worldly and selfish influences ; but the conviction that 
we cannot take refuge from it in conscious rectitude, 
that the charge is, after all, only too true, that there 
is, in fact, a very wide distinction between the truth 
and its vehicle, between the profession and the prac- 
tice^ that not only have others just ground of dis- 
satisfaction with us, but that, if we are honest, we must 
be deeply dissatisfied with ourselves, that, after all, 
in establishing and proclaiming our standard, we are 
inevitably exposing our own short-coming; all this 
presents itself to the mind of the honest enquirer 
after truth, as a reality which must be met, and not 
as a charge to be refuted, or a difficulty to be avoided. 

This is fundamental ; it affects the springs of our 
existence ; it poisons the fountain. Be the charges 
of others what they may, we are not true to our own 
standard, we do not live in accordance with our own 
sense of right and wrong. Human sagacity is foiled, 
and human wisdom confounded by such a presentation 



Virtue, 



21 



as this, and we are shut up to an alternative that 
decides our destiny. Nothing is left but blank de- 
spair on the one hand, and divine interposition on 
the other. Two questions then present themselves 
for decision. 

Has the Deity interposed for our relief? 

What is the nature of His interposition ? 

In the investigation which naturally follows, the 
prominent criterion would be, the perfection of the 
remedy proposed. It would be the first and most 
conclusive test, applied to any system of theology 
claiming a divine origin. This indispensable criterion 
I do not find in any of the ancient Eastern systems; 
they, one and all, fall short in the character of the 
being, whom they represent as controlling the uni- 
verse. I do not feel that I could safely entrust any one 
of them with the interests of my higher nature. There 
is too much vengeance and too much anthropomor- 
phism in the Hebrew Jehovah, and the unity of the 
Moslem Allah is one with which a pure spiritual ex- 
istence has but little in common. I turn to Chris- 
tianity, and I am perfectly satisfied. I accept the 
conditions, I recognize the authority, I acknowledge 



22 



Education. 



the purity, I verify the truth and I rejoice in the pa- 
ternity of the God, whom Jesus Christ has revealed 
as the Being in whom I live and move and have my 
being. 

There is no mystery here ; nothing which is not 
perfectly clear, and perfectly in accordance with my 
reason and my spiritual requirements. When I am 
told authoritatively, that I have an infinite Father, the 
questions which perplex my existence are set at rest 
forever. It covers the whole ground of my otherwise 
inexplicable existence, when I am assured, that a 
being of infinite perfection holds towards me the re- 
lationship, so imperfectly typified by the tenderness 
of human paternity. 

And when I go farther, and look upon the mode he 
has adopted for my relief, I am equally satisfied. My 
individuality is respected, my identity is secured, my 
self-respect is consulted, my affections are cherished 
and elevated, my aspirations are answered, my con- 
science is set at rest, and I am separated from evil, 
not by an arbitrary decree which would unman me, 
but by a change in my nature, dependent upon my own 
cooperation, which raises me above it. 



Virttie, 



23 



I do not find, in the conditions upon which my ac- 
ceptance turns, any subtle diplomacy or entangling 
casuistry, a single element of discord, or the most 
distant hint of antagonism with my race. In the 
ordering of a matter of such infinite moment, my 
nature demands simplicity and certainty — I find them 
both — '^Be ye holy " ^'Without me ye can do noth^ 
ing.'' ''Come unto me." ^^Ask and ye shall receive." 
"The holy spirit shall guide you into all truth/' ''If 
ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your 
children, how much more shall your Father which 
is in heaven give the holy spirit to them that ask ?" 
I do not really see what m*ore I could demand, con- 
sistently with the indispensable freedom of my will. 
Exerting my imagination to its utmost stretch, I can- 
not suggest any condition of existence which I would 
be willing to substitute for that in which I find my- 
self placed by the Author of my being. In moments 
of despondency I may sigh for temporary relief, but 
I know very well, that I would not accept it upon the 
conditions, under which, alone, it could be afforded; 
and I know equally well, that, in the worst condition 
to which I may be reduced, I have been furnished 



24 



Education. 



with a resource, whose foundation is deeper than the 
lowest possible depths of human experience. Once 
establish for me a claim upon infinite power, and then, 
let finite evil do its worst. If my Creator has spoken 
to me; if he has assured me of this by a clear and 
direct communication, which I possess and ap- 
prehend, I am not at all careful to discuss or explain 
the subtle casuistries of human interpretations, I de- 
cline all invitations into the field of polemics, and 
content myself with the simple and narrow path of 
faith in the power and love of my protector and my 
guide. 

I have no ability and no desire to understand or to 
explain his nature and his attributes, it is enough for 
me, that he is able and willing to help me, and that 
he has told me so himself ; and if I am asked, what 
assurance 1 have, that this conviction is true, I answer, 
the same assurance that the infant has, that there is 
milk in its mother's breast — the assurance of ex- 
perience. 

I believe that it is from wandering from the sim- 
plicity of faith, that discords and schisms have arisen 
among the professors of Christianity. It is from not 



Virtue. 



25 



distinguishing properly between matters of faith and 
matters of intellect, and from an unfounded reliance 
upon the deliverances of the human understand- 
ing, that questions have b een raised, and tests have 
been applied, which are neither suggested by reason 
nor warranted by inspiration. 

Undoubtedly everything depends upon what sort 
of a God we believe in, but the practical value of the 
enquiry turns, not upon the constitution of the divine 
existence, which is wholly out of our reach and above 
our comprehension, and which is all comprised for us 
in the word, God — infinite good — , but upon his atti- 
tude and his relationship to us; and while he has 
shrouded the first inquiry in impenetrable darkness, a 
darkness which mocks and stultifies those who enter 
it, he has condescended to the destitution of our 
created natures by answering the other so simply, 
that ''he that runs may read.'* The intellect has its 
legitimate field, science in every department of human 
existence — the whole compass of creation is open to 
it, and by proper processes of induction, it can ap- 
proach, step by step, to the point, where a legitimate 

synthesis will present truth in its perfect unity. But 
2 



26 



Education. 



faith has another province, and a different work ; her 
method is, not induction, but intuition ; her touch- 
stone is, not logic, but inspiration ; her cooperator 
is, not man, but God. 

The subject may be presented, advantageously, in 
another light ; we have viewed it positively ; it ad- 
mits of a strong negative consideration. We may 
take manhood, as opposed, first to childishness. The 
Apostle Paul suggests this view, when he says **when 
I became a man, I put away childish things what- 
ever essentially and distinctively belongs to child- 
hood ; not purity, nor truth, nor innocence, nor guile- 
lessness, nor trust, nor unsuspiciousness ; these be- 
long to childhood, but only because it is nearer to the 
source of being — nearer to the pure and perfect one, 
and, if we could put aside the self-assertion of man- 
hood, and transfer to our heavenly Father the alle- 
giance which children acknowledge to their earthly 
parent, we should still find abundant room for the 
exercise of all those qualities, which inhere in a loyal 
and trusting nature in every stage of its existence. 
But the tricks of childhood, the thoughtlessness, the 
irresponsibility, the vanity, the petty ambition, the 



Virtue. 



27 



pleasure-seeking, the materialism of childhood^ those 
who call themselves men, who would resent the de- 
nial of their claim to manhood, ought, in all con- 
sistency and all fair dealing, to put away these, as 
utterly unworthy of their position and their claims. 
In this aspect of the case, virtue is opposed to child- 
ishness. 

It is, also, opposed to effeminacy, as a distinctive 
quality — as representing those peculiar delicacies and 
incapacities which belong exclusively to the gentler 
sex. In many things we may imitate woman to our 
great advantage, but not in those refinements which 
she claims especially as woman, as the softening and 
conserving element of society. In dress, in our bodily 
and mental habits, in our social and industrial atti- 
tude, we must discard effeminacy if we would put on 
manhood, if we would be virtuous in the manly sense 
of the term. 

Finally, it is opposed to brutality — to the indul- 
gence and cultivation of our animal nature — to the 
vindictiveness, the obstinacy, the rage, the cunnings 
the cruelty which are the natural and characteristic 
qualities of the lower orders of creation : all who 



28 Education. 

yield to the control of these and kindred passions 
have surrendered their distinctive quality of reason, 
and sunk, in consequence, to the level of the unrea-* 
soning brute. In the two former cases, there may 
be left a remnant of vitality, a spark which may be 
kindled into a flame, but in this last, the soul would 
seem to be dead, and, with the soul, of course, all 
manhood, all virtue. 



HONOR. 



Honor, I define to be ^^the recognition of right and 
wrong, irrespective of a penalty, and in accordance 
with the highest standard to which we can attain." 
I do not suggest the definition as complete or ex- 
haustive, but as the one which presents the subject in 
the light best adapted to a rational enquiry, and, as 
the mode in which I desire to discuss the question 
implies single-mindedness at the outset, I shall as- 
sume certain positions as necessarily conceded. 

In the first place, I shall not waste time in entering 
upon any discussion as to the nature of our existence ; 
I shall take it for granted that true hfe is inward or 
spiritual life, and that what we are primarily con- 
cerned with is motives and principles, rather than 
rules and actions. This brings us, at once, into a 
higher region, and locates our scene of action upon a 
higher platform, it at once relieves our moral life of 
a heavy burden, and purges our moral atmosphere of 
an element of obscurity. The question then presents 



so 



Education. 



itself with great power and simplicity, ^^forwhatdo we 
propose to live and act?" and our answer involves 
our moral status, and suggests a question of still 
higher import, '^What are we It is no longer, 
''what are we doing?'' — that is secondary and subsidiary 
and is involved necessarily in the other ; if we are 
right we needs must do right ; much less is it the ques- 
tion ''what do we appear ?" The very entertainment 
of the other enquiry exhibits the superficiality of this, 
for we know that we cannot always appear right when 
we are so, and, on the other hand, we can very often 
manage to appear right when we are not so. 

What I claim for Honor is this, that it compels us 
to be^ in order that we may do^ and forbids us to seem 
and not to be. 

We know that the nature of our material existence 
is such, that it answers all the purposes of a mask, 
that it can be used for concealment and deception 
quite as readily as for the revelation and exhibition of 
the truth. If a man has nothing to conceal, if his in- 
ner life is pure^ his motives right, his intentions just, 
his conscience clear, he will necessarily act out his 
real nature , there will be a concurrence between his 



Honor. 



31 



internal and external life which will result in perfect 
simplicity and integrity of character, and will at once 
forbid all duplicity and paltering with deception. 
This is Honor; not an ambitious struggle for supre- 
macy ; not an adroit display of superficial qualities ; 
not a cunning concealment or a bold denial of our 
deficiencies and shortcomings, much less— very much 
less — a morbid uneasiness under censure and neglect, 
and a determination to coerce approval and consider- 
ation at every hazzard ; but a calm consciousness of 
imperfection, and a resolute effort at amendment; cour- 
age to look at the truth, and patience and fortitude to 
encounter it. 

I said that Honor rejects the idea of penalty; but 
this by no means implies that it is lawless or involves, 
in the slightest degree, the spirit of insubordination. 
On the contrary, its very essence is obedience to law, 
observed all the more strictly, in that it requires that 
obedience to be inward and spontaneous, and rejects 
the idea of external coercion. 

The fundamental principle of Honor is a recogni- 
tion of authority, an innate love of order, so complete 
and unreserved, that it would blush to be controlled 



32 



Education. 



by any power outside of its own voluntary impulse ; 
it finds no fault with such control, when its exercise 
becomes necessary ; it only feels mortified that the 
necessity should exist 

Honor holds in withering scorn the veil of secrecy ; 
it is enough that the action needs to be concealed— 
that it cannot be done in the open face of day — that 
it cannot challenge the observation of all observers — 
to make it a disgraceful action, and it would no more 
consent to such an action, than it would ventilate a 
calumny or perpetrate an assassination. It demands 
to be able to look every man in the face, and fully 
recognize all its responsibilities. It thus repudiates 
every shade of petty malice, and is as incapable of a 
mean thought as it is of a mean action : if it has an 
issue with another, it makes it openly, magnani- 
mously, nobly ; and it would sooner lose a victory, 
than gain one by the aid of accidental or adventitious 
circumstances, circumstances irrespective of the point 
at issue ; it knows that there are victories which are 
disgraceful, and defeats which are noble, and it 
never hesitates between the two. It rejects all 
unfair advantage and will never engage in a con- 



Honor. 



33 



troversy where the adverse party is plainly on an 
unequal footing. We all despise the bully, who takes 
advantage of his superior physical endowment to 
abuse and torment a weaker person ; we know, in- 
stinctively, that he is a coward at heart ; but there are 
other advantages than that of strength, the advantage 
of numbers, of confederacy, of concealment, of posi* 
tion, of surreptitious knowledge, all of which are 
equally repudiated by true manhood and true honor. 

It is a misfortune that the word Honor, which, in 
its proper and primary sense, is so expressive of the 
highest attainment of our race, is used, like so many 
other words, ambiguously in our language ; we use it 
to express an external tribute as well as an internal 
state, and, in our loose habit of thinking, we too often 
confound the two meanings. But Honor, as a sub- 
ject of serious discussion, can only be taken in its 
subjective sense, and, when we refer to it in that light, 
we necessarily view it as involving the possession and 
culture of all the highest attributes of our nature. 

In looking as thoroughly as I am able into this in- 
teresting subject, I do not see how it is possible for 
creatures constituted as we are to cultivate this noble 



34 



Education. 



principle, except with reference to a superhuman tri^ 
bunal: it is too easy to deceive created intelh'gences, 
intelligences upon the same level with ourselves, to 
leave us any hope of attaining the high moral stand 
ard involved in a sense of honor, by any submission 
to the demands or deference to the opinions of our fel- 
low men. If there is any advantage to be obtained 
in this way, it is so entirely relative and accidental as 
to make it a very unsafe mode of accomplishing our 
object. But the divine mind must be an infallible 
standard, and the only real difficulty is in apprehend- 
ing it. 

Is it then possible, in any satisfactory way, to as- 
certain the standard of honor in the mind of the 
Deity? Here is room for a great deal of subtle dis- 
cussion, but I do not intend to indulge in it, because, 
as my object is practical and not controversial, it will 
be accomplished most readily by the simple statement 
of a few necessary truths. It is impossible for God 
to require anything from his creatures which they are 
unable to perform ; He does require them to act in 
accordance with the principles of honor. 

Where then shall they obtain them ? 



Honor. 



35 



I answer, from himself. 

Undoubtedly, the Creator has ordained a mode of 
intercourse with his rational creatures, whereby they 
may possess themselves of his rational decisions, and 
all that is necessary is to adopt that mode sincerely, 
in order to secure the requisite knowledge. At all 
events, this commends itself as so entirely conclusive 
to my mind, that I instinctively reject any subtler 
process of excogitation ; and in adopting this course, 
I find the difficulty met by one of those suggestions 
whose very simplicity proclaims a divine origin — 
^'only do as you would be done by, and you will find 
all the requirements of honor amply fulfilled." — 
We shall, thus, learn to subordinate self to wider and 
nobler interests, and the question thus intelligently 
disposed of, our manhood alone is involved in the 
conduct it demands. If self is permitted to occupy 
our whole horizon, it will, of course, be impossible for 
us truly to see or justly to estimate the claims of 
others ; and yet, it is only in so far as we recognize 
those claims, that we can fill our own place, and per** 
form our own duties honorably, as members of society. 
If we are not content with any intercourse but that 



36 



Education, 



which accords to us an unnatural and unauthorized 
supremacy, our lives will be a narrow struggle for a 
vain and selfish object. Duty, alone, can secure to 
us our appropriate position ; no other is desirable ; 
we can fill no other with dignity or self-respect ; and 
if, by unworthy concessions or unreasonable efforts, 
we attain an unmerited distinction, it must, from the 
nature of things, be only the precursor of degrada- 
tion and contempt. 

If we can once realize that Honor is, not merely an 
ascription, but a state, that it is an internal quality, 
and not a mere appendage, the whole tone of our lives 
will be modified by the recognition, and ennobled and 
sanctified by the result, and we shall see, at once, the 
strange misconception, involved in the idea of assert* 
ing our honor, or defending our honor, or vindicating 
our honor; as if honor was such a bauble, such a 
superficial and ephemeral possession, as to need 
defence or vindication at human hands ; as if all the 
charges that could be brought against us, or all the 
calumnies that could be heaped upon us could change 
our true being, or make us other than we are. 

Our part is to be true and noble and generous and 



Honor. 



37 



brave ; to be kind and tender and patient and benevo- 
lent; all that depends upon ourselves, and constitutes 
our honor ; but for its vindication, there is needed a 
stronger arm and a wiser head and a purer mind and 
a tenderer heart, and God forbid, that we should ever 
come to that condition in which our honor shall de- 
pend upon human recognition, or be vindicated by 
human prowess. Undoubtedly, we are bound to 
cherish our honor; but let it be a living honor in- 
separable from our existence, unassailable, immortal, 
in which we live and move and have our being ; let 
us stand upon that honor, but not assume, that we 
can vindicate it ; let that honor protect us, but let us 
not delude ourselves with the idea that we can de- 
fend our honor ; it is like that other presumptuous 
delusion, which has filled the earth with blood, and 
furnished weak and v/icked despots an excuse for 
forcing upon others the lame conclusions of their own 
narrow minds, under the shallow plea, that they are 
defending truth, when, in reality, it is glory enough 
for man to touch the hem of her garment, or catch 
one ray of the light of her radiant face. 

Like truth and duty and heroism and virtue, that 



3S 



Education, 



noble word Honor has been pilfered and appropriated 
and utilized and degraded, until we have become al- 
most hopelessly entangled in the web of sophistry 
which self worship has cast around us ; and men have 
come really to believe that they can perpetrate the 
most dishonorable acts, and indulge the most dis- 
honorable motives, if, by an appeal to fear, they 
can silence the voice of the accuser ; but Honor can 
neither be appropriated nor coerced, and he who 
wishes to secure it must follow the course of nature ; 
he must sow the seeds in the spring that he may en- 
joy the harvest, legitimately, in the autumn. 



LIBKRTY. 



The question of Liberty has taken such possession 
of the world and will so often be presented to your 
minds in your future career, that I desire, before you 
are entirely separated from our influence, to say a 
few words to you about it ; and I will begin by elimina- 
tion, because there are so many loose and conflicting 
opinions upon the subject, that it will be almost im- 
possible to present it satisfactorily until the way has 
been cleared of the obstructions with which igno- 
rance and wilfulness have encumbered it. And first, 
I would suggest that Liberty is not an absolute but 
a relative possession : no man, no derived existence 
can be absolutely free ; whether we like it or not, we 
are hedged in on all sides by peremptory limitations; 
our thoughts, words and actions are all circumscribed 
and coerced into a very narrow circle of ordained 
possibilities ; ordinarily, we confine ourselves so 
strictly and unquestioningly within the assigned limits 



40 



Education, 



of our lot, that we are not aware of their existence, 
and we imagine that we are free, simply because we 
do not approach the bounds or test the strength of 
our enclosure, but a moments serious thought dispels 
the illusion and awakens us to a sense of our actual 
imprisonment, or, as it is more strongly expressed by 
another, *^our imprisonment within the actual/' 

It is well that we should come clearly and intelli- 
gently to the perception of this truth, because it is by 
our vain struggles against these ordained limitations, 
that our lives are marred and our characters de- 
graded; all the vain and childish ambitions, all the 
silly anxieties about position and popularity, all the 
fierce and bitter animosities engendered by self-love 
and self-mistrust, all the pitiful and petitionary exist- 
ences which degrade our nature and demoralize our 
intercourse, can be traced eventually to our igno- 
rance of the conditions and limitations of moral ex- 
istence. 

Again, Liberty is not independence, because in 
that case, it would be a mere ignis-fatuus, a word 
without meaning and without power. Desperately as 
men may strive after it, there is no such thing as in- 



Liberty^ 



41 



dependence possible in creation ; creation is, in one 
all-important sense, a unit, and its parts are all essen- 
tial and all inter-dependent. It is a simple philosophi- 
cal fact, says Carlyle, that casting this pebble from my 
hand changes the centre of gravity of the universe, 
Nothing is insignificant. In our feeble, relative views 
of things, we may undertake to distinguish and may 
dare to despise, but we pay the penalty for our pre- 
sumption when the stone of offense is made the head 
of the corner, when the despised and forgotten worker 
in the mine brings forth the jewel that dazzles the 
world. 

We may yearn for independence, our pride and 
our selfishness may drive us to frantic efforts to se- 
cure it, we may seek it by all the methods which 
human subtlety has devised to deceive the law-giver 
and circumvent the law, but we only succeed in ex- 
changing one form of vassalage for another and per- 
haps a heavier, because we are creatures and there- 
fore integral parts of creation, and the eye cannot say 
to the hand, I have no need of thee, nor the head to 
the feet, I have no need of you, on the contrary, the 
law of existence seems to involve an opposite princi- 



42 



Edticaiion, 



pie and the only effect of contempt, is, to compel the 
Creator to vindicate his despised creation and to give 
more abundant honor to that part which presumption 
has ventured to undervalue. 

But to return ; I said that Liberty is not independ- 
ence, however habitually it may be identified with it 
and with all that is supposed to secure it: wealth, 
for instance, which ministers to ease and purchases 
homage, which affords to the possessor that superfi- 
cial advantage in intercourse so gratifying to all our 
ignoble instincts, and tempts him to deny that fra- 
ternal relationship which is the basis of all true no- 
bility, true liberty, and therefore true happiness, in 
existence. 

The man who is dependent for consideration upon 
the tottering and transitory accessories of wealth may 
dream that he is independent, but he has only ex- 
changed a rational and ordained dependence upon 
the voluntary respect and affection of intelligent be- 
ings, for a servile and debasing dependence upon all 
the grosser elements of physical and conventional 
life ; he has shifted the ground of his respectability, 
from an innate, personal qualification to an adventi- 



Liberty. 



43 



tious circumstance as feeble as a reed and as fleeting 
as a shadow. And so it is with that assumed control 
over others which we call power, never remembering 
that we cannot possess the smallest real power over 
anything which is not already subdued and prostrate. 
No relative superiority is worthy of the name of 
power, for it can only exist by sufferance and until 
the stronger man comes to spoil and dispossess. 
Power is absolute, inherent and unchangeable, a posi- 
tive item in the elements of the universe^ a real 
energy performing a specific function ; not absorbing 
but developing, not controlling but regulating, not 
destroying but building up : that retroacting, self- 
centreing effort, which passes for power in relative 
life, is the source and centre'of all our weakness and 
all our misery; it must be so because it is false, and 
falsehood is but another name for weakness and mis- 
ery. The man, who depends upon the exercise and 
display of relative power, has already bowed to the 
yoke and published his innate weakness and mistrust, 
he proclaims to all intelligent minds that he needs 
some prop to sustain him in his appointed lot, some 
external testimony to assure him that he is entitled 



44 



Education. 



to his place in the universe of God. No man needs 
such a prop who is not pretending to a false position 
or basing his claim upon a false foundation : the true 
man is able to stand in his lot, he knows that lot to 
be a dependent one, and that it is, in its ultimate is- 
sue, ^'not as idle ore" 

*'But iron, dug from central gloom, 
*'And heated hot with burning fears, 
*^And dipt in baths of hissing tears, 
'*And battered by the shocks of doom 
"To shape and use.'^ 

And, in full view of these appalling conditions, he 
resolutely accepts it. Power, coercive power, that 
power which appeals to fear or interest or ambition, 
which appeals to anything in man but his higher and 
better nature, is not divine but satanic, and must share 
the fate of all satanic influences. 

Again, Freedom is not License. We need no 
elaborate argument to convince us of this. French 
revolutions and the atrocities of communism have 
spoken too loudly to the world to leave any thinking 
man in doubt as to the origin and end of lawless lib* 



Liberty. 



45 



erty. The dissolution of social ties, the confounding 
of ranks and orders, the supremacy of the ignorant 
and the unprincipled, the deification of vice, Moskow 
retreats and incendiary mobs have pretty v\^ell en- 
lightened the world as to the true nature and real ob- 
ject of revolutionary violence. The Neros and the 
Borgias, the Bourbons and the Tudors are bad 
enough but they are mild and welcome in compari- 
son with St. Antoine and St. Giles, The tramp of 
the soldier is an ominous sound, but it is melody it- 
self when compared with the maenad March of Ver- 
sailles. 

What then is Liberty ? There has been a vast deal 
said about it in the world, it has been invoked and 
eulogized and defined and discussed almost *' ad nau- 
seam ; it has been the theme of the poet and the 
orator, the Statesman and the philosopher time out 
of mind ; and, in our own day, it is not many years 
since we were invited annually to listen to the outpour- 
ings of patriotic zeal in which the sacred name of 
Liberty was bandied about with a flippant familiarity 
which has not been justified by subsequent experi- 
ence. I do not think we are quite as sure now, as 



46 



Educatioft, 



we were twenty years ago, that America has monop- 
lized the Liberty of the world. I think we are some- 
what prepared to acknoivledge that Liberty means 
something more than the ballot-box and the stump. 
What then is Liberty? The answer involves a 
paradox. Liberty is based upon bondage : in order 
that something may be free, something else must be 
bound : this grows out of our complex and relative 
existence ; the antagonism between our higher and 
our lower nature necessitates it ; if we would emanci- 
pate the one, we must control the other. It is only 
by viewing our existence in this light that we can 
realize the true nature and real dignity of human 
Liberty. 

The world has been turned upside down, whole 
races have been swept out of existence, the most sa- 
cred rights have been invaded, all that is pure and 
beautiful and lovely and refined in domestic relations 
and social intercourse have been trampled under foot, 
the fairest scenes of nature and the grandest produc- 
tions of art have been overwhelmed with ruthless 
and indiscriminate barbarity in the frantic pursuit of 
what men have chosen to dignify with the name of 



Liberty. 



47 



Liberty. There is scarcely a more affecting incident 
in modern history than the plaintive and self-forget- 
ful ejaculation of that queen of women and noblest of 
patriots, Madame Roland, on her journey to the scaf- 
fold. *'0h ! Liberty, what crimes are perpetrated in 
thy name ! " And yet what could have been ex- 
pected when the pure and the high souled consented 
to ally themselves with demons in the attempt to 
realize a visionary scheme of philosophic commun- 
ism ? There can be no true Liberty apart from con- 
trol, and it is a poor exchange to substitute the wild 
orgies of Anarchy for the feeble and fitful cruelty of 
legalized tyranny. 

Liberty then, (the declaration of independence to 
the contrary notwithstanding) is not a natural right, 
an inalienable inheritance. — It must be won and it 
may be forfeited; it demands qualifications; no one 
shall enter the palace and sit at the feast who has not 
on the wedding garment ; it must begin within — " self- 
knowledge, self-reverence, self-control, these three 
alone lead life to Sovereign power," How can he be 
free to be true whose life is based upon a lie ? How 
can he be free to be just whose fortune is built upon 



48 



Education, 



injustice and oppression? How can he be noble 
who lives by trickery and mystification ? How can 
he be great whose standard is success and whose end 
is self? How can he fulfil his duty to God or man, 
who is burdened with the care of his own protection 
and deafened with the outcries of his own disordered 
passions? If the demands of our lower nature are 
supreme, if we must be rich and great and admired 
and successful, what becomes of honor, virtue, jus- 
tice and truth when they cross our path and frown 
upon our success ? The man who dare not obey his 
conscience because it will curtail his income ; who 
is afraid to think out his thoughts because it will 
narrow his circle of admirers ; who shrinks from as- 
serting his individuality because it will mar the level 
of an arbitrary and meretricious standard, the man, 
in short, who allows himself to be drawn from the 
path of duty and of truth by any motive either of 
fear or desire, has subjected himself to a far more real 
and degrading bondage than feudal serfdom or Afri- 
can slavery ; these forms of coercion have been swept 
from the earth, but can we lay our hands upon our 
hearts and say that slavery has departed, when men 



Liberty. 



49 



allow themselves to be driven like galley slaves un- 
der the lash of party proscription and sectarian 
anathemas and superstitious tests, when the temple of 
Liberty swarms with traffickers, and her most blatant 
worshipers are bought and sold ? 

I have said, there can be no such thing as absolute 
Liberty, and, looking at the subject in its most gen- 
eral and abstract form, it seems to resolve itself into 
a simple alternative, into what we may call freedom 
of choice ; and this will appear more distinctly upon 
further scrutiny, whether we consider the subject in 
a social, civil or religious aspect. In a social point 
of view, while, on the one hand, there is no possi- 
bility of absolute freedom, there is, on the other, no 
power of absolute constraint. Society can only affix a 
penalty, and it is left for the individual to choose be- 
tween his fears on the one side and his satisfaction on 
the other ; as far as social influences are concerned, 
the wildest excesses of fanaticism can only be con- 
trolled indirectly, and the severest penalty that so- 
ciety can inflict is simple exclusion from her ranks ; 
if this influence ceases to operate, if the offender rises 

above or flills below its reach, he becomes, to that 
3 



50 



Education. 



extent, uncontrollably free : what control can society 
wield over the despot on his throne, the hermit in his 
cell or the outlaw in his retreat? Yet none of these 
men are absolutely free, they have merely preferred 
the pains of isolation to the control of society. Nor 
is there any more real absoluteness in civil control — 
the power of the law — the constraint is more obvious 
and immediate, the penalty more direct and tangible, 
but it is still a matter of choice to the offender, 
whether he will undergo it or no, and his civil liberty, 
however he may boast of it, is contingent upon his 
compliance with conditions which narrow down his 
freedom to a very stringent alternative. 

The question becomes more complicated whea it 
turns upon what is called religious Liberty, because 
the range is wider, the experiences deeper and the 
interests higher than in matters of merely temporal 
concern ; it becomes necessary to define and distin* 
guish. 

If by religious Liberty is meant the right of each 
man to seek, directly from bis Maker, needful infor- 
mation upon the most important of subjects, to judge 
for himself with regard to all intermediate aid or in- 



Liberty. 



51 



struction, to accept or reject the opinions of others, 
to acknowledge or deny human authority, to recog- 
nize or abjure human organizations, to claim for him- 
self the privilege, (as he certainly underlies the re- 
sponsibility) of choosing what he believes to be right 
and rejecting what he believes to be wrong in doc- 
trine, in opinion, in practice, and that his choice be 
uninfluenced by coercion whether open or secret, 
whether gross or refined, whether physical or mental; 
if this be the true definition and the true spirit of re- 
ligious liberty, then I think we are safe in affirming 
that it does not exist and never has existed in the 
world ; I think we may go still farther and affirm 
that it never can exist in the world constituted as it 
is. For, what is the meaning — the fundamental prin- 
ciple—of human existence ? is it not probation ? does 
it not imply a trial and a test ? is it not a field of ac- 
tion in which each individual soul is required, is com- 
pelled to act out its own nature and to manifest its 
own will ? 

The limitations which surround us are not arbitrary 
and accidental, they are the ordained and unerring 
tests of our character, they compel us to choose, and 



52 



Education, 



to choose under difficulties. Liberty is not a negation, 
an imbecile abstraction, a barren insignificance; it is 
the ultimate condition of human perfection ; it is the 
result of victory ; the battle must be fought ; the ty- 
rannies must be faced and vanquished ; the scare- 
crows must be found out and exposed, before our 
liberty can be anything more than a name, a vain 
and unmeaning boast. I do not see how it could be 
possible for us, either to realize for ourselves or man- 
ifest to others our rightful allegiance to the only true 
source of wisdom and of power, if there were no pre- 
tenders in the field, if that allegiance were not chal- 
lenged by specious and life-like simulacra, if our con- 
fidence in the integrity of our Maker were not tried 
by the most severe and searching appeals both to our 
fears and our hopes, and if our apprehensions of a 
higher and a nobler existence were not verified by a 
real and unmistakable experience. It is from first to 
last, a choice, a choice under difficulties, a choice in- 
volving a total surrender of ease and satisfaction, of 
honors and advancement, of social consideration and 
personal friendship, a choice involving, if need be, 
life itself, and which, through all the phases of human 



Liberty. 



53 



existence and the changes and chances of individual 
experience, has, sooner or later, been compelled to 
express itself in that memorable ejaculation, al- 
though the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall 
fruit be in the vine, the labor of the olive shall fail 
and the field shall yield no meat, the flocks shall be 
cut off from the fold and there shall be no herds in 
the stall, yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in 
the God of my salvation." 

Nothing short of this can convince a rational in- 
telligence that it is free, nothing short of this can 
meet the demands of a human soul in search of sub- 
stantial good. A good which is at the mercy of frail 
and imperfect existences, a good which depends 
upon caprice or prejudice or passion, a good which 
is based upon the shifting sands of popular opinion, 
so utterly falls short of the necessities of our real life, 
that the one must perish before we can consent to 
accept the other; and on the other hand, the good 
for which we are intended is so far above, not only 
our reach, but our comprehension, that it involves, 
logically as well as practically, superhuman energy in 
its attainment. The good, which comes to beings 



54 



Education. 



constituted as we are without effort and without sacri- 
fice, can only be material and transitory like our lower 
selves. 

If this is so, then I think we can come to the ques- 
tion with something like suitable preparation, and 
we shall perceive at once that the answer must be 
contingent ; it will depend upon our ultimate aim ; 
we will measure our freedom by the nature 
of our object and the extent of our hindrances. 
If the object for which I live is distinction, if I de- 
pend for my happiness and self-respect upon homage 
or admiration or any relative consideration whatso- 
ever, what becomes of my title to liberty while there 
remains a single intelligent mind that denies my claim 
and withholds his homage ? What a mockery of ex- 
istence must that condition present, which rests upon 
the assent of such unreliable and arbitrary natures as 
we feel to be within us and know to be around us? 
Not only must the price of such a liberty be external 
vigilance, but its preservation demands infinite wis- 
dom and boundless power. 

AH the great minds of the world have recognized 
this principle, from Cincinnatus the ploughman to 



Liberty. 



55 



Vassa the prince : we cannot of course lay bare the 
secrets of the heart; both of these men may have been 
ambitious, but they had at least the wisdom to sub- 
ject their ambition to their judgment, to make their 
own conditions and hold the reins of government in 
their own hands ; not for one moment w^ould they ac- 
cept office as a favor; not for one moment would they 
be petitioners for place and power; they knew that to 
the conscientious ruler office is a burden far more than 
it is an honor, that its labors are far beyond its re- 
wards, and no imposing assumptions or time-honored 
fallacies could blind them to the miseries of a false posi- 
tion ; they felt, and they nobly exemplified the differ- 
ence between a tool of a faction and a servant of the 
public ; and the result was power, real powder ; they 
controlled the people whom they served ; they did 
not hesitate to adopt needful policies, how^ever unpop- 
ular, and their records were honorable to themselves 
and glorious to their countries; their lives were free; 
in the assertion of personal individuality, in the main- 
tenance of legitimate control, in the sympathy and 
concurrence of the wise and good they were nobly 
free. 



56 



Education, 



Among the numberless evidences of the political 
wisdom of the Roman people, none has struck me 
so forcibly as the institution of the dictatorship, 
an institution which might, at first sight, seem to be 
the very death-knell of Liberty, but which, in the 
hands of a brave and free people, became one of its 
most efficient buttresses. They knew that, under 
ordinary circumstances, things would, in the main, 
find their level, that in spite of faction and intrigue 
and allowing for occasional exceptions, which are not 
without their use in the general plan, worth and vir« 
tue would occupy their appropriate place and find 
their proper reward, that the temporary supremacy 
of the bad is far more in appearance than in reality, 
that society can afford to sustain the scum and froth 
that gather to the surface in the stillness of the sum- 
mer calm ; but that in times of difficulty and dan- 
ger when deep principles are involved and the very 
life of the body politic is at stake, the exigency 
must be met by a sterner rule, and they felt so se- 
cure in their liberty, they knew so well the founda- 
tion upon which it was built, its vital connection 
with the plan of government, and its real hold upon 



Liberty, 



57 



the hearts of the people, that they never hesitated to 
commit it, for a time, to the keeping of one man, 
when they were assured that in him alone lay the 
ability to provide ne aliqiiid detrwtenti republicce 
accideret!' While there was virtue enough to main- 
tain this institution, Liberty survived ; when the 
dictator became enamoured of personal power, and 
was permitted to purchase it by consulting the in- 
terests of a dominant party, and to secure it by ex- 
terminating proscriptions, Liberty gathered around 
her the robe which they had defiled, and withdrew 
her august presence from the sanctuary w^hich they 
had polluted. 

But to return, Liberty has nothing to do with ex- 
ternals, it is a question which is settled once and 
forever in a man's own breast, and the question de- 
cided there is, simply, will he pay the price ? To 
be willing to swim against the current, to be able to 
choose the right when all influences and all motives 
and all personal considerations are against us, im- 
plies such a grappling with realities, such a mastery 
over time and sense, that the man who is conscious 
of this attainment is free for all the practical pur- 



I 

1 



58 



Education, 



poses of human existence, is free to live out his own 
life and to meet the absolute upon his own terms. 

Once more, to revert to the conditions of relative 
life, they hedge us in on every side and we can 
enjoy no liberty while subjected to their control ; 
how can we be said to be free, encumbered as we 
are with the necessities and subject to the laws of a 
derived existence conditioned from without ? 
There can be no hope for us while we look in that 
direction, and it is because men do look resolutely 
and wilfully in that direction that the poet is justi- 
fied in that inconclusive and bitter monologue in 
which he embodies the despair of uninspired human- 
ity. ^'To die ! to sleep ! and by a sleep to say we 
end the heart>ache and the thousand natural shocks 
that flesh is heir to! 'Tis a consummation devoutly 
to be wished." 

The mountain will not come to Mahomet, can 
Mahomet summon the humility and the courage to 
go to the mountain ? 

If I cannot reconcile the unchangeable laws 
of moral life with my crude notions of justice 
and right, may I not find an escape from the 



Liberty, 



59 



dilemma, by accepting those laws as a rightful 
substitute ? 

If I cannot mould events, m^ay I not more wisely 
suffer events to mould me? and if all fail here, 
if justice and right wholly elude my grasp in this 
phenomenal world, may I not utilize my failure by 
appealing to another court and transferring my 
cause to a higher tribunal ; and may it not be that 
the solution of this tremendous problem is to be 
found in a formula so simple, that he that runs may 
read, a formula made simple, for the very reason 
that it has to be read by a traveller who has no time 
for vain speculations and controverted opinions and 
questionable dogmas? I may be dissatisfied with 
my lot, but that lot is, at least, an inevitable fact. 
I do not see that it will help me to prove, in the 
clearest manner, injustice against my Maker, but I 
do see and feel every hour that it will help me to 
accept that lot from his hands, and turn it to the 
best account that my delegated powers will permit * 
I clearly see that I become both logically and ac- 
tually free the moment that I heartily acquiesce in 
the arrangement by which I have become a respon- 



60 



Education. 



sible being in a rational world, by which I am em- 
powered to select for myself the grandest existence 
to which a creature can hope to attain, an arrange- 
ment which superadds to the promise of an unmer- 
ited gift, the privilege of a co-operative merit, I do 
not ask for freedom to rebel, for freedom to upturn 
and demolish, for freedom to cultivate my lower 
nature and indulge my baser propensities ; such a 
freedom would only leave me doubly a slave ; but I 
ask for freedom to choose the highest and the best 
that is set before me, and I have it; for freedom to 
stand in my own lot and act out my own nature, 
and I have it ; for freedom to fight (if I must needs 
fight) under a banner of my own choice, and a chief 
of my own selection, and I have it. By the testi- 
mony of all the wise and the good that have gone 
before me ; by the testimony of a divine life and a 
martyr's death ; by the testimony of all the truest 
instincts and noblest aspirations of my own God- 
given spirit, I have it, without a doubt, I have it, 

Upon the young men of this generation, there 
rests an almost overwhelming responsibility ; in or^ 
der to meet it, you must be free; how can you serve 



Liberty, 



61 



your country aright if you are hampered by sensual 
habits, party pledges, personal ambitions ? Shake 
yourselves free, once and forever, from all illegiti- 
mate influences, in order that you may dedicate 
yourselves with manly energy to your divinely ap- 
pointed task. '*Let all the ends you aim at be your 
Country^s, your God's and Truth's/' None but true 
men can be true patriots ; patriotism implies self- 
surrender, **and a life of self-renouncing love, is a 
life of liberty." 



CHIVALRY. 



The only real power in the world is Christianity; 
everything else that passes for such is either an imi- 
tation or a substitute, or a positive'delusion. Christian- 
ity, however, though universal in its application 
and real in its operation, is exclusive in its practice; 
exacting in its demands and severe in its discipline, 
and our frail and time-serving race find it impossible 
to accept it in its strength and simplicity. Like the 
ocean which bears the wealth of nations upon its 
bosom, yet demands from the solitary swimmer long 
and faithful practice before it will sustain his insig- 
nificant weight, Christianity, while it offers a blessing 
to the race, demands sacrifice from the individual. 
The claims of Christianity are, however, too stronij 
to be overlooked ; it undertakes too much and it 
has already accomplished too much for the human 
race, both individually and collectively, to be en- 
tirely ignored ; the vast majority of civilized men 



Chivalry, 



63 



feel that they compromise not merely their safety, 
but their iatelligeace, when they openly reject it« It 
becomes necessary, then, to adopt a system which 
shall meet the difficulties of the case, which shall 
satisfy the conscience while it indulges the non-com- 
mittal policy of man, and consequently we see, from 
the very beginning, such systems inaugurated, sus- 
tained and presented to successive generations as the 
legitimate development and authorized representa- 
tives of Christianity in the world. They have been 
alike strong in their professions, lax in their princi- 
ples and intolerant in their practice, at the same time 
that they have, one and all, adopted some watchword 
and enforced some special virtue which gave an air 
of genuineness to their pretensions. 

Among these pseudo-Christian systems I have 
selected one for special notice at present, as well for 
its intrinsic beauty and its long prevalence as because 
it is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, and it 
seems meet, before v/e consign it to oblivion, to pay a 
passing tribute to its memory. 

The spirit of Chivalry was once a power on the 
earth, presumptuous, it is true, in that it claimed a 



64 



Education. 



higher origin and demanded a more unquestioning 
submission than was justly its due, but still to a cer- 
tain extent and within reasonable bounds a real and 
benignant power. 

In so far as it undertook to patronize Christianity 
and to defend justice and truth, its pretensions were 
simply absurd ; but in so far as it aspired to regulate 
manners and to establish a high standard of social 
intercourse, in an age when selfishness and brute force 
were running riot over the earth, it performed a noble 
work, and merits unqualified praise- It requires an 
effort in the present day, when so much has been 
done to meliorate and discipline human intercourse, 
to recall and realize the ages when force was the only 
law and submission the only security ; when the rude 
and untutored wills of semi-barbarous dependents 
could only be restrained by the still stronger wills 
of unscrupulous despots ; when there was nothing 
to interpose between power and its victim but the 
strong arm of superior power; when justice and 
right, virtue and courage, innocence and purity went 
down unrecognized before the remorseless oppressor ; 
when there was no safety, no sense of security, no 



Chivalry. 



65 



court of appeals, no overawing public opinion ; when 
might was right, and the act of oppression legalized 
itself. 

It is hard for us now to imagine such a condition 
of things, but then it was a stern reality, too stern to 
be long endured. There came at length a revolt in 
the camp ; all that was left of high and noble in 
man's nature rebelled against the supremacy of un^ 
reasoning, inhuman violence, and as there could be 
at first no available organization, brave and high- 
minded men went forth single-handed to protect the 
weak, to shelter the oppressed, to defend the inno- 
cent, and as brute force was all against them, they 
instinctively invoked some higher principle, some 
more subtle element of power to sustain them in 
their unworldly adventure. 

It is easy to see that the alliance men would desire 
to secure in such an unequal encounter would be, to 
them at least, a profound reality; no figment of the 
imagination, no conjuration of the heat-oppressed 
brain would answer as a reserved force in the presence 
of an overwhelming material enemy ; the language 
of a man who stood undaunted in such a presence 



66 Education, 

could have been nothing short of certainly ; ** I am 
not following a cunningly devised fable" must have 
been the expression of his confidence in the might 
which he invoked. The suggestion is forcibly illus- 
trated by the great Scotch romancer in the stirring 
scene at Ashby where the wounded champion on 
his wearied roadster presents himself in the lists to 
encounter the gigantic knight on his powerful war- 
horse; he religiously believed in the reality of the 
power which inspired him, and that the strength of 
that power was made perfect in his weakness. 

Such was the spirit of chivalry ; such was the in- 
ternal conviction of every man who^ in those days of 
gross material life^ went forth to encounter evil 
according to the light that was in him. 

It was not possible for such a spirit as this to re- 
tain the gross and brutal manners which would natu- 
rally attend the reign of violence. It would be im- 
possible to treat otherwise than kindly and consider- 
ately the unfortunate traveller rescued from the 
marauder; the tender woman saved from her captors 
would necessarily enjoy the respect and attention due 
to her weakness and her purity ; between the mem- 



Chivalry. 



67 



bers also of the fraternity there would grow up a 
courtesy and mutual respect which would be the 
badge of their profession, and the evidence of their 
relationship, and the fierce marauder himself would 
be taught by the forbearance of his conqueror a 
lesson of humanity which would bring a blush to his 
rough and hardened cheek. 

The distinguishing characteristic, I might almost 
say the vital principle of chivalry, very soon shared 
the fate of all true original principles in the world ; 
it was not a failure ; it did not fall short of its pro- 
fessions; but it perished for lack of culture ; it was 
poisoned by the impure air it was forced to breathe, 
and while the world looked on in stolid wonder cr 
sardonic mockery, the well-timed satire of Cervantes 
gave it the coup-de-grace" which consigned it to 
the tomb of epidemic insanities ; when knight- 
errantry was abolished, chivalry was drained of its 
life.-blood ; it ceased to be an influence and became 
an institution ; it assumed a body but lost its soul, 
and, as the untenanted mansion was swept and gar- 
nished, worldly and selfish spirits entered in and 
gave it selfish purpose and malevolent energy. 



68 



Education. 



Then came the reign of knightly associations ; then 
came the transference of responsibility from the 
individual to society; then came the lust of 
dominion and the worship of power ; then came in- 
trigue and corrupt maxims and Machiavellian poli- 
cies ; the standard of honor, simple and transpa- 
rent in the individual breast, became indistinct and 
wavering as interpreted by the many, and the motto 
of a magnificent Order became the response of an 
ambiguou oracle. 

The desire for what men call certainty, seems to 
amount to a passion in the human breast, and by 
this certainty is meant some established and localized 
dogma which is accepted as authority and can be 
referred to as standard in the collision of opinions ; 
and whatever disguises and intervening fallacies 
may be assumed, that dogma is always found to be, 
in the end, the expression of an interested opinion 
endorsed by numbers ; but such an endorsem.ent 
will not satisfy a mind in search of truth, or secure 
the creative purpose in the development of our 
being; conscience alone is the ultimate standard of 
truth and duty — an enlightened conscience, a con- 



Chivalry. 



69 



science regulated and quickened by sincere and 
earnest culture is the only oracle which claims a 
divine sanction and yields a divine response; and it 
is because conscience is what it is that men are so 
desperately driven to seek another arbiter. If the 
divine spirit does actually dwell in man, its exactions 
must necessarily excruciate his nature, and it is not 
to be wondered at, therefore, that he should seek to 
modify those exactions and bring into a practicable 
compass an apparently unattainable standard ; brave 
and honest thought will enable him to do this without 
any compromise either of human freedom or divine 
perfection ; but brave and honest thought is not 
easy to man, and sophistry offers a more acceptable 
solution ; hence the desire to tamper with the 
standard, and when its sanctity has been once in- 
vaded there is, of course, no limit to the infringe- 
ment ; and just in proportion to the infringement 
will be the mistrust of his position and an anxiety 
for external support, which will drive him to intoler- 
ance and justify persecution. This is unfortunately 
too often the history of human organizations ; origi- 
nating in the purest motives, seeking only to secure 



70 



Education, 



fraternal cooperation in a benevolent enterprise, the 
necessary concentration of power involved in organ- 
ization offers a tempting bait to human ambition, 
and the allegiance of the feeble-minded and the 
thoughtless is adroitly transferred from the benevo- 
lent ends to the instituted means, and timid and 
selfish natures, too weak for faith and too indolent 
for knOiVledge, are only too thankful to hang their 
destiny upon the skirts of an organization. Thus it 
was with chivalry transmuted into a system. Indi- 
viduality merged in a corporation ; faith circum- 
scribed by the senses ; power divorced from reason,^ 
and what could remain but a hollow mask awaiting 
the inevitable exposure of time and dependent for 
its transient power upon the myopy of the world. 

But my object in introducing chivalry to your 
notice was not to dwell upon its historical develop- 
ment, but to exhibit and analyze its typical mean- 
ing, and to notice, for a short time, some of those 
salient characteristics which connect it, not with 
history, but with life. 

And first, it recognized and proclaimed the origin 
and true nature of power. The world (and by that 



Chivalry, 



71 



I mean human nature controlled by the senses) has 
but one idea of power, coercion ; ignorant of the 
true order of the universe, unable to realize the 
pefect harmony of creation or to measure the orbit 
of its mechanism, it constructs a microcosm out of 
materials furnished by the senses, and then seeks to 
bring all things within the scope of its narrow ope- 
ration ; regarding itself as infallible, it never ques- 
tions its own decisions, but proceeds in consistent 
defiance of reason to execute its own decrees ; estab- 
lishing its dogmas upon inductions unsatisfactory to 
individual minds, it overrides conscience and that 
freedom which is the only true basis of morality, in 
order to establish an arbitrary system, which it pro- 
mulgates as truth ; this spirit was exhibited in its 
grossest form in the middle ages; and the petty 
tyrannies which it produced and cherished com- 
pelled a reaction, which first took the form of knight- 
errantry in its social, and afterwards of the reforma- 
tion in its religious aspect. 

The fundamental principle of knight-errantry was 
a denial of the maxim, might is right \ ' and the 
power it acknowledged was spiritual power ; and 



72 



Education. 



thus, though exceedingly weakened by worldly asso- 
ciations, its influence was still for good ; it was the 
entering wedge of civilization ; it unmasked the 
veiled prophet who had ridden rough-shod over the 
world, and gave humanity the hint which subsequent 
generations have partially developed. It said to the 
awe-struck multitude, fear not ; truth is a power — 
the only power in the universe; fear not failure ; 
fear not defeat ; fear not isolation ; fear falsehood 
and treachery and the spirit of intolerance and the 
spirit of coercion; fear not external force, fear inter- 
nal baseness ; fear not hatred from without, fear 
presumption within ; fear not created might, fear 
God the Creator, and fear Him too much to despise 
or set at naught any of His creatures; fear Him 
too much to limit what He has not limited, or co- 
erce, directly or indirectly, where He has not co- 
erced/' It said all this in a somewhat crude and 
inconsistent manner, but it spoke in conformity to 
the spirit of the age, it adapted itself necessarily to 
the coarse, material society in which it was devel- 
oped, and gave a hint to the out-lying world which, 
in one form or other, has modified and influenced it 



Chivalry. 



73 



ever since. It challenged despotism ; it questioned 
the reality of brute force ; it erected another 
standard, and proclaimed its allegiance to a nobler 
master; it did not actually assert the power of weak- 
ness, but it recognized its rights ; and while it lacked 
the intelligence to seek its protection, it gallantly as- 
sumed the duty of defending it ; with the blundering 
magnanimity of the royal convert of old, when lis- 
tening to the pathetic story enacted in Judea nine- 
teen hundred years ago, it indignantly exclaimed : 
Si adessem cum meis Frankis eum defendissem'' 
Again, while it repudiated force it exacted cour- 
tesy — courtesy rather as a subjective affection than 
an objective duty. The true knight was bound to 
be courteous, not so much for the sake of others as 
for his own sake ; not so much from benevolence as 
from self-respect ; herein it fell short of Christianity, 
it was introspective rather than circumspective ; 
while professing benevolence and performing benefi- 
cent actions, it unhesitatingly put self uppermost, 
and made it the pivot of its operations and the 
centre of its system- But, though far from perfect, 
it still presented itself as a boon to the world ; if it 
4 



74 



Education, 



could not reach the sublimity of that precept, re* 
sist not evil/' it at least took care that it was evil 
which it did resist ; if it could not arm itself with 
the best weapon, it at least endeavored to turn its 
weapon against the common enemy : and if it failed 
to pierce through the subtle disguises of the real 
foe, it assailed all who wore his livery or were found 
in his ranks ; resisting wrong even unto blood, it 
maintained, in the most desperate encounters, its 
conservative principle of universal courtesy ; it 
stretched out its hand to the fallen foe, and prof- 
fered him an honorable friendship upon honorable 
terms ; it repudiated every shade of vindictiveness, 
and preferred defeat to victory obtained by treachery 
or unfair advantage. Would to God that its spirit 
could be emulated in this Christian land and this 
era of boasted civilization ! 

The decadence of chivalry and the change of 
manners attendant thereupon is, in a great degree, 
accounted for by the proverbial and unreasoning 
tendency of human nature to rush into extremes, 
and to mistake accidental concurrences for orderly 
associations,— antecedent and consequent for cause 



Chivalry, 



75 



and effect. It was quite possible, and it became 
practically customary, to substitute good manners for 
good feelings, to veil a black heart and a malevolent 
purpose under a smiling countenance and a graceful 
exterior, and, as society could only enforce the latter, 
they were insensibly accepted as tests of member- 
ship ; but exposure was inevitable ; society would 
soon discover that something was wrong, and, 
when the cheat was brought to light, a hasty 
and inconsiderate repudiation of the evil would 
sweep away with it the superficial good which 
it had adopted as a mask ; and politeness con- 
strained into the service of hypocrisy was com- 
pelled to share its fate, or, still worse, become its 
scape-goat : for, most unfortunately, while the polish 
was banished, the hypocrisy remained under another 
form and a coarser garb. There is no natural alli- 
ance, — nothing necessarily in common between 
malignity and urbanity, nor have coarseness and 
bluntness any real connection with honesty and 
sincerity; good things naturally and rationally 
belong to each other, and when they are separated 
it is owing, not to any inherent discord, but to the 



I 



76 



Education. 



subtle power of evil mastering the feeble glimmer- 
ings of reason in man, and taking advantage of his 
myopic vision to deceive him. No one in whose 
mind reason predominates can be misled by such 
short-sighted sophistry; a good man will cultivate 
good manners because they are good, and a true 
man will take care that they are the exponents and 
not the masks of his genuine feelings and a brave 
man will not permit the misconduct of others to 
drive him to similar misconduct. He will be gentle 
and kind because he feels gently and kindly ; he 
will be considerate in his intercourse with his fellow- 
men because he loves his fellow-men, and he will 
treat them with all proper respect because he recog- 
nizes, in the humblest and the worst, a spark of that 
divinity which, kindled into a flame, will burn for- 
ever ; coarseness may be better than hypocrisy, but 
I see no reason why we should be subjected to the 
degrading alternative. 

It is Christianity alone that can ensure an unfail- 
ing courtesy, because it is she alone that can relieve 
a consciously feeble being from the necessity of self- 
protection, and thus set him free to recognize the 



Chivalry. 



77 



rights and consult the feelings and minister to the 
satisfactions of those around him. 

It has been well said that bad manners are bad 
morals, because they indicate a mind hampered by 
self-indulgence and narrowed by self-considera- 
tion ; they show that the perpetrator has not 
comprehended the true scope of human ex- 
istence and the full extent of human responsi- 
bility; and when charged with his neglect of social 
duties, they leave him free to ask with indignant 
surprise, **Am I my brother's keeper ?" Christian- 
ity alone can give an unhesitating reply, and she 
answers with authority, Undoubtedly you are your 
brother's keeper, for it is only in that capacity that 
you rise above the brute ; it is only in so far as you 
are able to postpone self to others that you give 
evidence of a higher nature than the tiger or the 
ox in all creation, it is man alone who can intelli- 
gently and habitually sacrifice himself to his fellow 
creatures, and therefore it is he alone who shares 
the divine attributes and partakes of the divine 
nature. And the courtesy which Christianity de- 
mands is in accordance with this view; it springs 



78 



Education. 



from the relationship of man to man, and is based 
upon the precept, " do as you would be done by/' 
I know no better illustration of the contrast between 
the two systems than is found in the poem of Sir 
Launfar* — a poem remarkable alike for its pure 
diction, its elevated tone and its masterly con- 
ception. 

On his powerful war-horse, clad in brilliant armor, 
buoyant in youth and flushed with hope, the knight 
rides forth from the arch of his emblazoned gateway 
in search of the holy grail ; at the foot of one of the 
stately pillars lies a beggar, sordid in rags, asking 
alms for the love of Christ, Loathing the foul and 
unsightly object the knight throws him in scorn a 
golden coin, and rides on, in the strength of his 
stainless name, to fulfil his high behest. That was 
Chivalry. He traverses the earth, he is soiled with 
contact and worn with fatigue^ exposure and want ; 
time has subdued the mettle of his steed, rusted his 
armor, stained his tunic, bent his sword and shorn 
his crest. That was Life. Bowed down with humil- 
iation, disappointment and loss, he arrives at his 
own gate, now as ever sternly closed against the 



Chivalry, 



79 



unfortunate ; there, as before, lies the beggar, sordid 
in rags, asking alms for the love of Christ ; but 
another spirit answers his appeal ; softened by- 
sorrow, humbled by adversity and taught by expe- 
rience, the knight dismounts, sits by his side, 
divides with him his last crust, and shares with him 
his battered cup, 

And the cup in his hand is the holy grail,' ^ 
" Not what we give, but what we share,'' 
*Is proof to the giver that God is there. 

True courtesy is self-forgetful ; it calls imagination 
to its aid, and, with an intelligent mental effort, 
places itself in the position of the other party, 
enters into his feelings, and instinctively adapts 
itself to his condition ; it rejects the motto, Each 
man for himself and God for us all," and in its place 
it substitutes a far nobler and, I am fain to think, 
more effectual maxim, Each man for his neighbor, 
that God may be for each man." 

free rendering— The line in ''The Vision of Sir Laun- 
fal" reads '*For, the gift without the giver is bare." 

Ed. 



Education^ 



Again, we are indebted to chivalry for suggesting 
and enforcing a high estimate of honor, and for 
emphatically distinguishing it from its shadow, repu- 
tation, and its pseudonym, ambition. It recognized 
and maintained an internal standard established 
upon the highest available principles ; no outward 
force was permitted to bear upon it ; no pressure of 
fear or favor ; no motive of policy or prudence ; no 
regard for reputation or hope of distinction was 
suffered to invade the sanctuary in the breast where 
honor was enshrined ; it reigned there supreme, 
and issued its decrees with an authority which no 
earthly power was allowed to dispute. But here 
again it fell short of Christianity; the standard 
itself was defective ; it lacked the element of self- 
protection, and required to be vindicated and 
defended ; not so Christianity ; her honor is unas- 
sailable, unapproachable ; far out of the reach of 
enemies and defamers, it fears neither violence, nor 
malignity, nor calumny, nor treachery. It fears not 
Herod the king, nor Pilate the judge, nor Caiaphas 
the priest, nor Judas the traitor ; but its presence 
strikes the accuser dumb, and casts to the ground 



Chivalry. 



81 



the armed assailant ; its silence is stronger than 
words, and its words are blows. Chivalry never con- 
ceived such an honor as this ; but it refined and 
purified the standard of society; it degraded ruffian- 
ism, and established a code under which humanity 
could begin to assert its long-lost rights ; unreal 
itself, it was the type of a glorious reality, and fur- 
nished a glimmer of light when all around was 
Cimmerian darkness. 

Perhaps the most unworldly form in which chivalry 
presents itself to our minds is its systematic adop- 
tion of the weaker side. The tendency of human 
nature is so strong to take refuge under the arm 
of power and the shelter of combinations, and 
such shameless injustice is perpetrated under the 
shadow of these imposing alliances, that any in- 
fluence, however imperfect, which gives even a hint 
in the opposite direction, must elevate the race and 
give it dignity and purpose. I do not know a more 
melancholy exhibition of human nature, than that 
which society constantly presents, of honest and 
earnest thought, generous and noble aspiration^ 
unselfish and benevolent action struck at from the 



82 



Education, 



vague identity of a soulless clique, shorn of its 
power of usefulness, and compelled to linger out 
its probationary term in a vain struggle with an 
evil influence too subtle to be identified and too 
impalpable to be crushed, while, in all that virtuous 
throng which surrounds him, not one is found who 
has enough of manhood in his nature to stand by 
his side and strike one blow for the victim of 
calumny ; not one lover of truth who is willing to 
seek her retreat or share her obscurity. Chivalry 
taught this noble lesson to the world, and it is one 
of the saddest signs of the times that the only 
human institution which frowned upon the spirit of 
cliquedom has become a by-word and a mockery 
among men. I speak of this tendency not as a 
matter of regret to the victim, upon whom it exer- 
cises a wholly beneficial influence, but as a painful 
witness against society. As far as the sufferer is 
concerned it is simply a needful test of his genuine- 
ness ; no man can rely upon his own sincerity, no 
man can be sure of his allegiance to truth and his 
conviction of her ultimate triumph, until his faith 
has been tested by a relentless alternative ; and we 



Chivalry. 



83 



know well enough that there is nothing which pre- 
sents that alternative with such absolute power to 
the spirit of man, as the dread of isolation : to the 
lover of truth, therefore, the trial is doubly weU 
come, inasmuch as it operates both subjectively and 
objectively to ensure his fidelity; but what can we 
say for the society which applies the test? What 
can we say for the professed lover of truth who 
denies to another, under such a fearful menace, that 
right of private judgment, that freedom of con- 
science vv'hich he does not hesitate to claim for 
himself? What can we say for the man who listens 
to the maligner, and accepts his suggestions without 
a demur and without an enquiry? To the victim 
we can say with emphatic confidence, "Go forward 
in God^s name, for the test of your integrity is the 
power to stand alone." 

I have spoken of chivalry in its unworldliness ; 
let me conclude by a short reference to its grace- 
fulness. 

The inspiring power, the sustaining influence of 
knighthood was devotion to a mistress ; she was the 
fairest and the best; no doubt of her honor, no 



84 



Education. 



question of her beauty, no denial of her supremacy 
was for a moment to be endured; every victory was 
gained in her name, and all the laurels cast at her 
feet ; the acknowledgment of her worth was a test 
of friendship and an affront to her was a challenge 
to battle. In itself it was a childish conceit which 
served to adorn an imperfect system and give relief 
to its harsher features, but it was a powerful and 
beautiful type of real life, and has been illustrated 
by the heroes and martyrs of the world, her Alfreds 
and her ^Fredericks, her Fenelons and her Luthers, 
her Tells and her Washingtons in every page of her 
sanguinary history. 

In one of the beautiful romances of the Baron de 
la Motte Fouque he avails himself of the simile, 
and symbolizes truth as the spiritual mistress of his 
hero, sublimated in her society and indurated in 
her service. In every encounter it is her influence 
that ensures the victory, and in moments of doubt 
and despondency, it is her presence that sustains 

*The Elector Frederick of Saxony, the third of the name 
and called "The Wise/' 

Ed. 



Chivalry, 



85 



and her voice that directs him ; earthly beauty- 
allures him in vain; worldly honors are powerless 
to tempt him; victory is no triumph without her 
approval, and defeat at her bidding is more wel- 
come than victory. 

It sounds like romance, but it is the grandest 
reality; it is true life illustrated and epitomized. 
There is but one principle in human existence which 
can give it power and permanence, which raises it 
above the finite and the transient into the infinite 
and the eternal, which rescues man from the tyranny 
of his lower nature and makes him divine ; it is the 
spirit of Truth ; and to the youth who has become 
so enamoured with the beauty and so convinced of 
the power of that spirit as to ask earnestly and 
sincerely, how shall I propitiate her ? where are 
her marks and what her credentials?" With the 
same earnestness and sincerity I reply, Her 
marks are within you, and her credentials the 
convictions of your own mind, for which she has 
provided one supreme and infallible test, Do they 
sustain you f 

Undoubtedly the crowning glory of chivalry was 



86 



Education. 



its vindication of woman, and its recognition in her 
person of the power of weakness. Modern civiliza- 
tion has repudiated the system; it has denied the 
honor and rejected the tribute and scorned the wor- 
ship which began, it was said, in flattery and ended 
in degradation, which proffered a superficial homage 
that it might lull its victim into a false security. No 
doubt individual experiences will warrant the 
charge ; but such cases are only an abuse of the sys- 
tem; according to the true principle of chivalry woman 
was recognized as the higher, because the purer 
nature, and man sought at her shrine the influences 
which were to elevate and the wisdom which was to 
guide him ; he bowed before her as a superior being 
and gloried in prostrating his muscular strength be- 
fore a spiritual energy which his better nature com- 
pelled him to obey. It was the true apotheosis of 
woman; but alas ! she has found in that sublime 
elevation too rare an atmosphere for her unsancti- 
fied nature. She has chosen to descend and to 
claim, in the crowded arena of worldly strife and 
competition, an equality which is not true, and which 
can only be conceded at the expense of her purity 



Chivalry, 



87 



and her honor ; she claims her rights, but she has 
lost sight of those rights in the very act of claiming 
them. She has the right to influence and to elevate 
her protector, to mould and to educate her progeny, 
to give tone and character to society, to be true and 
patient and brave and heroic beyond the imagination 
of man ; she has the right to work in obscurity and 
suffer in silence and achieve in neglect, where the 
stronger arm would fail and the stronger heart sink ; 
she has the right of unerring intuition, where human 
virtue staggers and the masculine intellect is at 
fault ; she has the right to scathe the seducer with 
one glance of her eye and to nerve the coward with 
one word from her lips. No woman need ever com- 
plain of her lot. It is not the mother ot the Gracchi 
or the wife of Lucretius or the niece of Virginius ; 
it is not the Pembrokes or the Russells or the Frys 
who spread their wrongs before the world and seek 
to revolutionize society for false and selfish ends- 
If man is false and selfish and tyrannical, woman 
has no right to complain ; it was her office to train 
him ; she had the control of his plastic years and 
his hours of innocence and docility, and if she neg- 



88 



Education. 



lect the trust in the pursuit of low, ambitious and 
unfeminine self-assertion, she reaps the bitter fruit 
of her folly when she feels compelled to descend 
from her high position and grapple with the savage 
with whom her failure has cursed society. When 
mothers and sisters cease to be the fountains of 
honor and truth, and, like the daughters of the 
leech, cry continually, give, give/' is it strange 
that men should seek to secure domestic peace by 
the sacrifice of principles which they have never 
been taught to revere, but on the contrary have 
been led to despise ? If those whose privilege it is 
to be sought, themselves become the seekers, is it 
strange that the unbecoming attitude should be 
recognized and accepted by the low minded and the 
vain? Woman may succeed in her inglorious effort; 
she may place herself on the same level and share 
the toils and the triumphs of her sturdier mate, but 
it will be at the expense of all that constitutes her 
real worth. She must sacrifice for the coveted privi- 
lege her native dignity and honor, and cast the 
crown of her purity to the ground ; she must forego 
the homage which is her birthright, and the influ- 



Chivalry, 



89 



ence which is her dowry, and the ministry which is 
her glory, and, from the heights of modesty and 
refinement, descend by her own act into the depths 
of a drudgery for which barbarism might blush ; 
she must prefer an arena to a throne and the sword 
of a gladiator to the sceptre of a Queen. When 
the salt of the earth has thus lost its savor, what 
can follow but corruption and death ? 

" Then the mission of woman is o'er. 
The mission of genius on earth ! to uplift, 
Purify and confirm by its own gracious gift, 
The world, in si^ite of the world's dull endeavor 
To degrade and drag down and oppose it forever. 
The mission of genius ; to watch, and to wait, 
To renev/, to redeem and to regenerate. 
The mission of woman on earth ! to give birth 
To the Mercy of Heaven descending to earth. 
The mission of woman ! permitted to bruise 
The head of the serpent and sweetly infuse, 
Through the sorrow and sin of earth's registered curse, 
The blessing which mitigates all ; born to nurse, 
And to soothe, and to solace, to help and to heal ; 
And the glory of Heaven on earth to reveal. '^ 



SCIENCB AND RELIGION 



Mr. Draper of Columbia College, N. Y., the author 
of many interesting and popular works, by which he 
has earned a wide-spread reputation both in this 
country and in Europe, has issued a volume entitled 
The conflict between Science and Religion/' in 
which he has noted, in small compass, but with 
marked effect, a variety of interesting facts bearing 
upon his subject. While every one at all acquainted 
with the writings of an author of such general merit 
and such rare literary attainments will expect much 
instruction as well as enjoyment from a treatise from 
his accomplished pen, there is, I think, in store for a 
thoughtful and observant mind some disappointment 
in the title by which the book is heralded to the 
world, and to such a mind the follov/ing questions 
will naturally occur. Is there, can there be, any 
legitimate conflict between Science and Religion ? 
Do they occupy common ground ? are they in the 
same plane of thought? are not their orbits parallel 



Science and Religion, 



91 



and therefore incapable of intersection? are their sub- 
jects, their objects and their issues so nearly identi- 
cal as to permit contrast or oppugnancy between 
them? 

Science has to do with matter, with the senses, the 
external, the objective, with what can be known, 
ascertained, proved ; Religion has to do with spirit, 
with the internal, the subjective, the intuitive, which 
cannot be proved, but only believed in reliance upon 
testimony higher than that of sense, which the mind 
does not merely receive and adopt, but which it fur- 
nishes from its own constitutional resources and 
secures in its own impregnable citadel, the heart. 

What may be Mr. Draper's own religious convic^ 
tions can only be surmised indirectly and not from 
any clear, unequivocal expressions on his part, so that 
it is only left for us to hope that he uses the term 
Religion in a popular and not a scientific sense, that 
is to say, that he uses the word, not to express the 
actual intercourse between the human Soul and its 
Creator, but only the form under which it becomes 
known when it ceases to be a reality and has become 
a simulacrum. Unquestionably what Mr. Draper 



92 



Education. 



presents to us as one of the parties to the conflict is 
not Rehgion, but Sacerdotalism, or Ecclesiasticism, 
and it is quite fair and much pleasanter to suppose 
that he does not intend to identify such widely dif- 
ferent forms of thought It would have been better, 
however, both for himself and his reader, if he had 
maintained the distinction as decidedly as Gibbon has 
done or even Lord Bolingbroke, when he assures his 
reader that his object in writing his philosophical 
essays is to rescue the misrepresented and abused 
religion of Jesus from the hands of its nominal ad- 
herents and professors. If that is Mr. Draper's inten- 
tion we cannot but sympathize with him and wish 
him God-speed in his undertaking, but we must, at 
the same time, regret that he has left so much room 
for doubt and equivocation in his mode of treating 
the subject. 

Religion means the worship of the Creator, Science 
means the investigation of His creation, and there is 
no more room for conflict between them than there 
is between paying due honor to Phidias and the study 
of the architecture of the Parthenon. No doubt the 
nightly observation of the heavens brought to the 



Science and Religion. 



93 



mind of the young Syrian Shepherd many curious 
and interesting questions as to their structure and the 
laws of their ceaseless movements, but this scientific 
enquiry does not seem to have been at all incon- 
sistent with the religious suggestions v^hich they also 
awakened, nor has it chilled or checked the burst of 
inexpressible adoration which found vent in the beau- 
tiful apostrophe. '^VVhen I consider thy heavens, even 
the work of thy hands, the moon and the stars which 
thou hast ordained, what is man that thou art mind- 
ful of him, or the son of man that thou so re^ardest 
him There does not seem to be any rational 
ground for that struggle which has been so persist- 
ently maintained between the men of science and the 
men of faith, and which has met with such a well- 
merited rebuke at the hands of one whose comprehen- 
sive intellect enabled him to see the merits and desig- 
nate the boundary of each field of legitimate enquiry, 
and who has pronounced his conclusive verdict in 
some such form as this. ^^If the men of science are 
content to regard a manifest creation without the 
logical implication of a Creator, I do not see what, 
right the men of faith have to complain, they surely 



94 



Education. 



are not obliged to think as the men of science do; 
and if the men of faith are resolved to rest upon the 
dogma of a lawless and mutable Creator, I do not 
see what ground the men of science have to object, 
they surely are not obliged to think as the men of 
faith do, for neither party has any just claim to the 
monopoly of error, and each should therefore care- 
fully abstain from forcing his own characteristic 
nonsense upon the convictions of the other/' 

Professor Huxley from his scientific standpoint 
gives utterance to his assumed right of dictation in 
the following conclusive remark. *Tursue," he says 
the nettle and the oak, the midge and the mammoth, 
the infant and the adult, Shakespeare and Caliban to 
their common root and you have protoplasm for your 
pains; beyond this analysis science cannot go, and 
any metaphysic of existence, consequently, which is 
not fast tethered to this physical substance, which is 
not firmly anchored in protoplasm, is an affront to the 
scientific understanding." And there, according to 
the Professor, is an end of the matter. No doubt 
there is an end of the matter as far as the human 
power of analysis is concerned. But what bearing 



Science and Religion, 



95 



has that analysis upon spiritual substance, which is 
not the analyzed matter but the analyzing mind? and 
what disposition does the acute investigator propose 
to make of that intelligence to which he addresses 
his complacent conclusion? When he speaks of the 
mammoth and the midge, of Shakespeare and Caliban, 
does he mean the bodies or the minds of those created 
intelligences ? Undoubtedly the investigation which 
he is discussing will bring up in protoplasm or some 
other material ultimate, because matter, being finite, 
has a necessary limit, and we are furnished with 
faculties which can ascertain that limit, faculties ob- 
jective to and above the substance under examina- 
tion; but what power have we above mind which can 
perform the same office to that unitary, invisible, in- 
tangible substance? The only power outside of and 
above mind is the power which created it, and any 
knowledge we may be able to obtain of that inscruta- 
ble substance must be revealed and not excogitated. 

It is not surprising, however, that intelligent minds 
which delight to deal with certainties should be 
driven by the crude assumptions of ignorance and 
credulity to despise and ignore opinions incapable of 



96 Education, 

sensible verification, but, while we may be willing to 
make due allowance for impatience under such 
provocation, we cannot admire that want of confi- 
dence in their own honest opinions which drives men 
to an unreasonable extreme on the other side. It 
surely is not in accordance with the highest wisdom^ 
that, because some men of faith are ignorant and 
foolish, we should allow ourselves to throw away as 
a useless bauble that trust in a wise and good Cre- 
ator which lies at the foundation of all wisdom and 
goodness in his dependent creature. Fools, we are 
told, rush madly in where angels fear to tread; but 
because fools are presumptuous, angels need not be 
skeptical. 

It cannot be denied that, as our first acquaintance 
is with matter and its various combinations, which 
are in full vigor when spirit has scarcely a conscious 
existence, we should inevitably, in the beginning of 
our empirical career, surrender ourselves to the im- 
portunate demands and the succulent enticements of 
the dominant element, looking upon body as the sub- 
stance and soul as the shadow of our complex exist- 
ence; but it is hardly consistent with our growing 



Science and ReIigio7t. 



97 



intelligence to maintain this merely superficial dis- 
tribution of our component elements, after the mind 
has been awakened to its true dignity and its proba- 
ble destiny ; when the mind has become capable of 
observation and reflection it cannot but recognize the 
inevitable dissolution of the one and the instinctive 
conviction of the imperishability of the other, and 
reason and our awakened intelligence will require us 
to act accordingly. 

I now propose to set before you, in as succinct a 
manner as possible, the characteristic claims on each 
side of this warmly contested conflict. 

Not being scientific, I cannot hope to exhibit the 
claims of science with such clearness and force as 
Mr. Draper has done in his noble exposition of her 
achievements in every department of human progress; 
and in order, therefore, to do full justice to her com- 
parative merits, I will present to you in Mr. Draper^s 
own words a partial but comprehensive view of the 
brilliant array of her triumphs over ignorance and 
superstition, whenever she has encountered these 
stultifying influences in her onward march to uni- 
versal secular dominion. 
5 



98 



Education^ 



After furnishing to his rea der a long list of the 
wonders accomplished by science in the intellectual 
and economic developments of her power, he pro- 
ceeds, and yet how imperfe ct, how inadequate is 
the catalogue of facts I have furnished in the forego- 
ing pages. I have said nothing of the spread of in- 
struction by the diffusion of the arts of reading and 
writing through public schools, and the consequent 
creation of a reading community, the modes of manu- 
facturing public opinion by newspapers and reviews, 
the power of journalism, the diffusion of informa- 
tion public and private by the post-office and cheap 
mails, the individual and social advantages of news- 
paper advertisements. I have said nothing of the 
establishment of hospitals, the first exemplar of which 
was the Invalides of Paris; nothing of the improved 
prisons, reformatories, penitentiaries, asylums, the 
treatment of lunatics, paupers, criminals; nothing of 
the construction of canals, of sanitary engineering 
or of census reports ; nothing of the invention of 
stereotyping, bleaching by chlorine, the cotton gin, 
or the marvelous contrivances with which cotton 
mills are filled — contrivances which have given us 



Science and Religion, 



99 



cheap clothing, and added to cleanliness, comfort and 
health; nothing of the grand advancement of medi- 
cine and surgery, or the discoveries in physiology^ 
the cultivation of the fine arts, the improvement of 
agriculture and rural economy, the introduction of 
chemical manures and farm machinery. I have not 
referred to the manufacture of iron and its vast 
affiliated industries; to those of textile fabrics; to the 
collections of museums of natural history, antiqui- 
ties, curiosities. I have said nothing adequate about 
the railway system or the electric telegraph, nor 
about the calculus, or lithography, the air-pump or 
the voltaic battery. I have been so unjust to our 
own country that I have made no allusion to some of 
its greatest triumphs: its grand conceptions in natural 
history; its discoveries in magnetism and electricity; 
its invention of the beautiful art of photography; 
its application of spectrum analysis; its improvements 
and advances in topographical surveying and the 
correct representation of the surface of the globe; 
nothing of that gift to women, the sewing machine; 
nothing of the noble contentions and triumphs of the 
arts of peace — the industrial exhibitions and world's 



100 



Education, 



fairs. What a catalogue have we here ; and yet how 
imperfect! How striking the contrast between this 
activity and the stagnation of the middle ages ! 

So much for science, and what more can her most 
devoted adherents, her most enthusiastic worshipers 
demand from those whose lot has fallen under the 
benign influence of her august and beneficent 
reign ? 

But, in order to do justice to her claims, is it 
necessary to depreciate other influences which have 
shared her labors and sanctified their results, from the 
first dawn of human reason to the noontide glory of 
the nineteenth century. For who can deny that, if 
science furnished the body, religion supplied the 
motive and the soul of a large portion of those 
benevolent enterprises so confidently claimed as the 
unshared glory of scientific effort in the world ? And, 
because religion has been afflicted with inquisitors 
and hypocrites, shall we deny the equally patent fact 
that science has had her charlatans and her quacks? 

Let us, then, for a moment, dismiss from our regard 
the camp-followers of both wings of the grand army 
of humanity, and see if we can find something better 



Science and Religion, 



101 



to say of religion than that she is represented by the 
hangers-on who have stolen her name, usurped her 
powers and desecrated her altars. 

We deny that the Church of Rome, of Constan- 
tinople or of Alexandria have the slightest claim to 
represent religion in the world ; we deny that 
Mohamedanism in the East or sectarianism in the West 
are anything more than human efforts to dogmatize 
under difficulties ; we deny that religion is to be 
found either in forms of speech or forms of organ- 
ization ; the binding which the word expresses is not 
an external profession or an adhesion to any form of 
definition or of doctrine or of liturgical order; it is 
an internal union between the soul and its maker ; it 
is a subjective allegiance to a spiritual Lord ; it is a 
spontaneous claim to an indefeasible right ; it repudi- 
ates all external force either through flattery or fear; 
it can neither be enticed nor coerced; the moment it 
yields to either influence its life-blood is exhausted 
and it ceases to function ; all appeals to external in- 
fluences betray the presence of a worldly or a cloven- 
tooted spirit. The instinct of coercion is, not religion, 
but sectarianism or priest-craft. Mr, Draper has con- 



102 



Education. 



trasted his justly reverenced science, not with a 
reality, but a simulacrum, to which he has, very un- 
fairly, accorded the venerable name of religion, and 
if I could wield Mr. Draper's pen and possessed his 
wide information, I would undertake to expose his 
singular mistake ; as it is, in my endeavour to do 
justice to the party he has misrepresented, I must 
draw very largely upon the good will and unprejudiced 
mind of those whom I address. 

Let us turn then to the enquiry which is due to 
the other side of the question. What has religion 
(not its counterfeit) done for the human race? It 
has made them acquainted, not with their acces- 
sories, their surroundings, their external manifesta- 
tions, but with themselves, their origin, their status 
and their destiny, and has assured them, by intui- 
tions stronger and more reliable than any demon- 
strations by the senses, that they are immortals, 
partakers of a God-like nature and a divine inher- 
itance, that they are not the slaves of circumstances 
and the victims of fate, but free-men in the universe 
of God and masters of themselves, that, however 
poor they may be in the transient and the perisha- 



Science and Religion, 



103 



ble, the boundless wealth of an infinite Father awaits 
their appropriation ; it tells them that all anxiety, 
all perplexity, all doubt and all fear are the mock- 
ing suggestions of diabolic infestations ; that their 
Creator is their friend, has taken note of their disa- 
bilities and provided a remedy for every evil that 
can possibly assail them ; it has changed for its 
possessor the whole aspect of existence, and instead 
of leaving him at the mercy of arbitrariness or ac- 
cident, instead of assigning him to the fate of Tan- 
talus or Sysiphus or Prometheus or Ixion, it bids 
him pursue his journey through an ordained wilder- 
ness of needful preparation, hand in hand with 
infinite love and infinite power ; it tells him that the 
world, his transitory habitation, is not, as it some- 
times appears, the devil's world, but a workshop in 
the universe of God, and that though it swarms 
with insects which sting and sing,'' and produces 
briars and nettles which torture and impede him, it 
is vivified by the warm sunshine and tempered by 
the fragrant breezes and glorified by the invisible 
presence of his Maker, ever bringing good out of 
evil, joy out of sorrow, and illuminating despair it- 
self with the never-dying vestal fire of hope. 



104 



Education, 



God is in His world ; is not that enough to bless 
and sanctify it ? The Creator cannot ignore or for- 
sake His creation ; creation is the eternal work of 
an eternal Being, the perpetual outcome of undying 
force, and as even the material elements cannot per- 
ish but only change, much more must there await 
the undying spirit an eternal evolution of character- 
istic growth. God is in His world; not visibly, not 
sensibly, but in spirit and in power, and we, His 
children, must cheer this night of obscurity — of 
trial — with the sound of His voice and the touch of 
His hand as they come to us through other ap- 
pointed media, until the day dav/n, and we behold 
Him, not by the starlight of faith, but by the sun*» 
light of fruition. 

Religion when it is genuine cannot curtail our 
enjoyments but only purify and expand them ; it 
does not vulgarize and degrade what is beautiful and 
beatific in nature or in art ; it does not condemn 
the external world, and its legitimate delights ; but 
it sanctifies creation and divinizes the universe ; it 
tells us, that all is good because all is of God, that 
evil is only the shadow which emphasizes good to 



Science and Religion, 



105 



the relative understanding — the back-ground which 
throws into needed relief the otherwise overpower- 
ing perfection of the divine handiwork, and it an- 
ticipates the day when our eyes shall shed the scales 
which now bedim them — when the shell which now 
enshrouds us shall be broken, and we shall unfold 
our wings in the sunshine of eternity. It assures 
us that our Creator has not sent us into the world 
to be at the mercy of any arbitrary, self-constituted 
power — any power which can penetrate into that 
holy of holies, the human heart, and rule despot* 
ically there, which can touch our real being or do 
more than beat the case of Anaxarcus.'^ 

Undoubtedly it is so ordered that our faith in an 
invincible defender should be tried to its fullest 
capabilities, that we should pay to the last farthing 
the value of a possession as boundless as the uni- 
verse and to be held in fee-simple forever; but it 
tells us at the same time that the instruments of 
that trial are not, as we are too apt to suppose, free- 
agents, but that they are controlled and utilized 
under the most perfect supervision, for our ultimate 
good, by the wisdom and the love inherent in ere- 



106 



Education. 



ative power ; that the true welfare of a rational 
creature can never be associated with falsehood or 
treachery or malignity or meanness, that the objects 
of these degrading impulses are as illusive as they 
are specious and insinuating, and that it is only he, 
who, detecting and disregarding their enticements, 
and enduring to the end the fiery trial which tests 
his integrity, will find himself at last on the vantage- 
ground of eternal Truth. 

Religion can lay claim to many of the temporal 
blessings awarded to science as her exclusive endow- 
ment, but I have purposely confined myself to spir- 
itual results, for I consider these as far more than 
a counterbalance to all the comforts and luxuries 
which science has introduced into the world. For 
myself, and I verily believe for a goodly array of my 
fellow travellers on this short journey of life, I can 
safely declare, that I would not exchange one ray of 
the light shed upon our path by the gospel of Christ 
for all the inventions by which science has sought 
to lighten the burden of existence— a burden often 
far beyond the reach of any human alleviation. But 
I gratefully acknowledge that I am not called upon 



Scieiice a7id Religion, 107 

to arbitrate in the matter, for the two influences are 
in no degree incompatible with each other, in as 
much as there is nothing in the analysis or the 
proper use of matter which precludes spiritual affec- 
tions or which should issue in a result of fatal augury 
to spiritual hopes and aspirations. 

Under the influence of these views, I have almost 
exclusively confined myself to the bearing of Re- 
ligion upon the life of the soul — the real life — the 
life which is immortal because its constituents are 
immortal; and I believe that this is generally con* 
sidered its only claim ; but, if we look a little more 
deeply into the subject, I think we shall find our* 
selves compelled to modify this opinion. The re- 
cord which Christendom has concurred to adopt as 
inspired, assures us that Godliness hath the prom- 
ise of the life that now is, as well as that which is 
to come/' and I believe that the record here as else- 
where is correct, I am free to acknowledge, how* 
ever, that this question, as with all questions pre* 
sented to rational intelligences, is open to discussion 
and admits a difference of opinion ; a free choice is 
the privilege as well as the responsibility of ration- 



108 



Education. 



ality, and, in the exercise of this choice, the man 
of the world says, in effect, I have given due atten- 
tion to the subject and I deliberately choose the good 
things of this life, because they are real, tangible 
and practicably enjoyable ; the vague satisfactions 
which you offer to me as a substitute are unreal, 
unsubstantial and not guaranteed by experience or 
reliable authority ; we are in intelligent contact with 
this world, and there is no proof of any other. In 
pursuance of the same choice the man of faith says, 
I too have looked carefully into the question, and I 
come to a very different conclusion : — I find by prac- 
tical experience that the good things of this world 
are utterly insufficient to meet the wants of my 
higher nature ; multiply them as I may there is ever 
a want, ever a misgiving; I either need ''more worlds 
to conquer or I crave relief from some indefinable 
anxiety, and I am tempted by an unappeasable 
demand of my nature to drown the one in the mad 
orgies of intemperance or the other overtakes me 
with the power of dynamite even upon an imperial 
throne. 

But when I turn to Religion the veil is lifted ; In- 



Science and Religion, 



109 



finity and eternity open their arms to receive me ; 
the prospect is limitless and the progress endless ; 
no " pent up Utica," no shadow feared of men," 
no unsatisfied desires; Time the remorseless police- 
man has withdrawn and I linger unconstrained 
amidst the fruits and flowers of an eternal Paradise. 

But, it is replied, all this is very fine rhetoric but 
where is your proof ? Men and women, the latter 
especially, from time immemorial have invented 
myths and written stories to illustrate their crude 
theories or vent their disappointments and rectify, 
according to their idiosyncracies, the ways of Provi- 
dence, dealing with Nemesis and compensation as if 
they were masters of the situation and could foresee 
the issues of events of which they can catch but the 
faintest immediate effects. What is your imagined 
eternity but just such a fable constructed for just 
such a purpose ? 

I reply, in the first place, it is not a fable fur- 
nished by my own brain, but an instinct of my race, 
an element of the human mind ineradicable and 
universal ; I am not responsible for it ; I have not 
excogitated it ; I receive it, as I do my other in- 



110 



Education. 



stincts, as neither admitting question nor demand- 
ing proof; and secondly, it neither admits question 
nor demands proof, because it is as perfectly adapted 
to the order of my consciousness as food is to my 
hunger or exercise to my health. 

The satisfactions of the brute are limited to the 
present moment and therefore he does not demand 
a future; he finds no use or occasion for a spirit- 
land^' because his imagination does not transcend 
the bounds of sense ; but we are spiritual beings, 
and we must either find a spiritual home or sell our 
birthright and enjoy our pottage. 

If the effort to grasp the higher life appalls or 
stultifies us, and we fall back upon wealth as the 
symbol and source of temporal good, we find it in- 
adequate, uncertain, and loaded with care ; but the 
symbols and concomitants of the higher life are real, 
permanent and take care of themselves; Truth is 
and ever must be an eternal possession ; Purity is 
wine distilled from thedresfs, in which there remains 
BO element of corruption ; Honor is an internal 
principle unassailable from without ; and Love is 
indestructible, her holy flame forever burneth, from 



Science and Religion. 



Ill 



Heaven she came, to Heaven returneth." They are 
all constituents of an eternal existence, incorrupti- 
ble, inalienable, unassailable, and, though they are 
reserved, coy and reticent, they can by due devotion 
be wooed and won and, by an eternal marriage, be- 
come bone of our bone and fiesh of our flesh] and 
the soul, nourished by these immortal elements, 
gradually but surely, itself becomes immortal, Th^ 
logic of the case is so simple and resistless that men 
do not attempt directly to confute it, but, as the 
power of self-deception in man is as limitless as his 
other faculties, he is able skilfully to distort and 
circumvent it. For Truth, he can substitute fact or 
a verbal quibble ; for Purity, an unchallenged ex- 
terior; for Honor, reputation ; and for Love, polite- 
ness. But temporary substitutes are not eternal 
verities, and, while the power of illusion may enable 
a mortal to totter for a few days on the borders of 
uncertainty, conscience dogs his footsteps, and some- 
times, when least expected, illusion drops her mask 
and reveals a countenance black wnth bitter iron}-. 

And thus, while the man of the world revels in 
success and riots in enjoyment, his success is uncer- 



112 



Education, 



tain and his enjoyment precarious ; and he knows it. 
While, on the other hand, the man of faith, saddled 
with Conscience, circumscribed by Truth, eon- 
strained by Purity, under a law to Honor and 
betrayed by Love, pursues his journey light of heart, 
because in the home whither he is hastening those 
qualifications are in the ascendant and become the 
eternal possession of an immortal spirit ; and he too 
knows it ; and this knowledge appeases his craving 
for the permanent and the real and is a pledge to 
him of an endless life. 

But not only is the relationship between Science 
and Religion misapprehended and misstated in this 
unauthorized contrast, but there is a total want of 
fairness and of truth in the presentation of the ex- 
ponents of the religious element in the records of 
history. Instead of ambitious ecclesiastics, shame- 
less sensualists, domineering priests, ignorant and 
bigoted partisans, hypocrites and fanatics, why not 
enumerate as her true representatives such illustri- 
ous lights as Moses and Pythagoras, Solon and Ly* 
curgus, Socrates and Plato, Epictetus and the Anto- 
nines, Huss and Boos, Luther and Erasmus, Fenelon 



Science and Religion, 



113 



and Oberlin, Leighton and Chalmers, Robertson and 
Bushnell ? No one will deny to these men their 
appropriate place in the catalogue of religious lights 
in the world, and there is not one of them who 
cherished a feeling or uttered a thought unfriendly 
to the cultivation of Science or the advance of 
society in every department of human develop- 
ment. 

To select, as the representatives of the religious 
element in society, men who denied her spirit, re- 
jected her counsels and repudiated her methods in 
the whole course of their unhallowed careers, is 
hardly consistent with the impartial attitude claimed 
by Mr, Draper in the introduction to his brilliant 
but misleading exposition. 

True, he endeavours to account for his course by 
assuming that, in order to exhibit clearly the 
antagonism he has so hastily announced, it is 
necessary to notice exclusively the extremes on 
either side ; but the extreme he presents on the side 
of Science consists of her most genuine and worthy 
followers, such noble lights as Archimedes, Euclid, 
Newton, Herschel and their compeers; while on the 



314 



Edticatzoii, 



side of Religion he offers, not the extreme of her 
highest and truest devotees, but Cyril, Torquemada 
and Leo loth, men in whose composition the relig- 
ious element seems to have been utterly obscured 
or (if such a thing were possible) left out altogether. 
To talk of a conflict between Science and Religion, 
as represented by Archimedes on one side and 
Torquemada on the other, is simply to vitiate the 
argument by the introduction of a new term into 
the syllogism. 

The simple truth of the case seems to be, that, 
as the divine element in nature has become more 
and more distinctly recognized, as men have been 
compelled, by the gradual opening of their under- 
standings and the dispersion of the mists in which 
Ignorance and prejudice had involved them, to see 
and acknowledge a Creator, they have felt the 
absurdity as well as blasphemy of undertaking to 
discuss and determine the qualities of his essential 
being, and have seen that enquiries into the nature 
©f the Godhead, instead of leading to any more 
satisfactory or universal approach to that knowledge 
which is Life eternal," have resulted in clouding 



Science and Religion, 



115 



the intellect, embittering the spirit, hardening the 
heart, and brutalizing the nature of the mistaken 
zealots who have persisted in seeking for truth, not 
in a limitless and all-embracing universe, but in the 
narrow wells of individual opinion — that, while they 
have contended like mad-men over the nature of 
God manifest in the flesh," they have sacrificed to 
their pride, their vanity and their malignity — to 
their sectarianism and their idolatry, the holy tem- 
pers, the self-sacrificing spirit and the Godlike charity 
which signalized his claim of being the representa- 
tive of Deity to suffering humanity — that, while He 
said hereby shall men know that ye are My disci- 
ples, if ye have love one for another," the chief 
object of their religious efforts seemed to be to ex- 
clude one^another from the roll of that discipleship 
— to narrow down the universal sonship of the race 
to professional or sectarian dimensions, and to 
represent the exclusiveness which is the stigma of 
society, as a cherished element of the divine admin- 
istration. 

The undebauched intellect of men revolted against 
the ai'bitrary and self-assumed claims of specialists, 



116 



Education. 



who were too myopic in their vision to recognize 
anything beyond the limits of their narrow horizon ; 
and men of science, outraged by the audacious 
attempt to stultify the human mind by confining its 
exercise to a sphere limited by the combined assump- 
tions of ignorance and impudence, and, hastily assum- 
ing that religion was accountable for the sins of 
Bigotry, determined to throw off, altogether and 
without examination, the claims of a spiritual world, 
and to acknowledge nothing which could not be 
verified by an appeal to the senses. But this was 
only to fall into the opposite error, and to suffer 
themselves to be driven from a legitimate field of 
enquiry, because they found it infested with charla- 
tans and hypocrites, and instead of recognizing the 
different natures of the two pursuits, and applying 
the same honesty of purpose and diligence of inves- 
tigation to the higher that they had done to the 
lower, and assigning to each its own laws and 
methods of demonstration, they found it easier or 
more convenient to deny peremptorily all existence 
but matter and all proof but the presentation of 
the senses. This method of dealing with the sub- 



Science and Religion, 



117 



ject is very much like darkening the windows and 
then denying the existence of the sun. Scientists 
may obtain temporary relief from obnoxious ques- 
tionings by such a course, but mankind will con- 
tinue to ask the questions; and the true and the 
brave will never be satisfied until they get a distinct 
and soul-satisfying answer. 

But here we are m.et by the question, is such an 
answer attainable ? Is there, in other w^ords, any 
standard of Truth in the world ^ Science, dealing 
with the material, replies Protoplasm : I see no ob- 
jection to that answer coming from the source it 
does. It is perfectly fair and proper to give a mate--* 
rial answer to a sensual enquiry : only, the proper 
term to be used in this case is, not Truth, but fact. 
Truth is not physical but metaphysical, and to give 
a metaphysical reply to a physical enquiry is the 
illogical proceeding which Aristotle condemns, under 
the charge of ''passing over to another kind,'' or 
drawing a general conclusion from a particular 
premise. Science deals with facts, Religion with 
truths; and when Pilate put his mocking question, 
he really meant to say, if he had only known it, 



118 



Education^ 



** how can we, who are finite beings, give an intelli- 
gible answer to a question which involves the 
Infinite." God, alone, can comprehend all that is 
included in that universal term, and, therefore, to 
Him alone belongs the solution of that tremendous 
problem ; and His reply, when it is given, can never 
come in a material, but only in a spiritual form, 
never to a mind occupied with the external and the 
physical, but only to one engaged in an internal and 
spiritual investigation. When, therefore, any mind 
puts the question honestly and with intention to 
the Father of Spirits,'' the answer comes directly, 
in unshared, undiluted form to that mind, and the 
recipient must be content to possess it under that 
restriction ; it is His own, sole, exclusive property ; 
it is that stone, referred to in the book of Revela- 
tion, upon which there is a new name written, which 
no man knows save he that receives it ; it is, and he 
should glory in the fact, an open secret between him 
and his Maker ; that imagined Truth, which is not 
sufficient oi itself to its possessor, with which he is 
not perfectly satisfied without witness or endorser, 
which must be shared and adopted by numbers, in 



Science and Religion, 



119 



order to give him assurance of its worth, is the 
mockery which attracts and deludes the servile tribe 
of persecutors, fanatics and sectarians. Woe be to 
us, if, in our search for Truth, we are content with 
any discovery which needs to be sustained by a 
buttress resting upon the shifting sands of human 
opinion ; and it is well worthy of our earnest con* 
sideration, whether we can ever pay too high a price 
for that long-sought, hard-found Ehrenbreitenstein^ — 
Broad stone of Honor — that ultima Veritas," 
immovable and immutable forever as the throne 
itself of the Almighty, 

In the bitter waves of woe, 
Beaten and tost about 
By the sullen winds that blow 
From the desolate shores of doubt- 
When the anchors that Faith had east 
Are dragging in the gale, 
I am quietly holding fast 
To the things that cannot fail : 

I know that right is right, 
That it is not good to lie ; 
That Love is better than spite, 
And a neighbour than a spy ; 



Education, 



I know that Passion needs 
The leash of a sober mind ; 
I know that generous deeds 
Some sure reward will find ; 

That the rulers must obey ; 
That the givers shall increase ; 
That duty lights the way 
To the beautiful feet of Peace ; 

In the darkest night of the year, 
When the stars have all gone out, 
That Courage is better than fear, 
That Faith is truer than doubt ; 

And fierce though the fiends may fight. 
And long though the Angels hide, 
I know that Truth and Right 
Have the universe on their side ; 

And that somewhere, beyond the stars, 
Is a love that is better than fate ; 
When the night unlocks her bars 
I shall see Him, and I will wait.'' 



THE PHENOMENAL AND THE REAL 



There is but one light in which it is possible to 
view, intelligently, the existence in which we now 
find ourselves, that is, as a preparation for some- 
thing beyond. Its transitoriness, its imperfection, 
its imprisonment, its uncertainty and the shortness 
of its duration, all address our reason so impera- 
tively that we are compelled to abandon it before 
we can ignore its conclusions : — we must shut our 
eyes, or close our windows, before we can deny the 
revelations of sunlight. 

But, as it has become the fashion, in many regions 
of civilization, to turn night into day, to conduct 
our symposia, whether of business or of pleasure, 
under the false glare of artificial light, and to waste 
the healthy oxygen of noon in unnatural and emas- 
culate repose, so, I think, it will be found with those 
who insist upon treating as a finality, this brief, tem- 
porary, incomplete existence ; who are willing to 
6 



122 



Education. 



accept the embryonic life of the senses, as a full 
answer to the demand of the spirit for a boundless 
term of development ; to adopt the thought-forms 
of time and space for the realities of Infinity and 
Eternity. 

What are we? Some inexplicable embodiment of 
material elements, held together for a brief period 
by magical art, and to be dissolved and dispersed 
when the thaumaturgic tension is withdrawn ? Are 
all the rest, mind and heart, feeling and affection, 
will and choice, faith and hope, love and trust a 
mere delusion — a mockery — a tantalizing dream 
wherewith some arbitrary, irresponsible, unapproach- 
able, inexorable agent sees fit to beguile the tedium 
of his unemployed and purposeless power ? Is life, 
in very deed, a sphinx riddle — -a losing game — 
whose final arbiter is Death ? 

Thanks to the Power that made me and sent me 
forth upon the quest after Truth, the search for the 
holy Grail, I find myself furnished with an answer to 
this wilful and debasing Pessimism ; I find rising up 
within me, unbidden, unsought, a protest so strong, 
so clear, that the voice of the fiend dwindles into an 



The Phenomenal and the Real. 123 



inarticulate babble, before its triumphant refrain, 
'The Lord God omnipotent reigneth/' or, in gentler 
but no less elevated strain, I know that my 
Redeemer liveth/' 

Let us now attempt to analyze this despondent 
suggestion, under which the human mind endeavors 
to veil its indolence and its cowardice. 

Put into simple language, it merely says, Things 
are not as I would have them, the Creator of the 
world, if there be one, whatever may be His abstract 
pretentions, is a mere bungler in His attempts at 
construction. I can see no meaning and no use in 
suffering; whatever theories the human mind may 
construct to account for the existence of Evil, it 
still remains and ever must remain an unaccounta- 
ble and stultifying phenomenon in a creation devised 
by Infinite wisdom, regulated by Infinite love, and 
executed by Infinite power." And this purely human 
apprehension is presented to us as the necessary 
result of the exercise of our rational powers, powers 
which the Deity himself has furnished to our men- 
tal constitution. 

And here, let me remark, that there is a wide — 



124 



Education. 



an infinite distinction between Reason and the pro- 
cess of ratiocination, as it is evolved in the human 
mind. The former — Reason — the Logos — is God 
himself. In the beginning was Reason (the Logos) 
and Reason was with God, and Reason ivas God." 
The latter is a formal process, correct in construc- 
tion, but entirely empirical in its elementary parts ; 
those parts are Data, and the legitimate deductions 
from them : tae deductive process can be verified^ 
but alas for the Data ! they are either utterly want- 
ing, or wholly illusory. Before we can correctly 
apply the logical formula to the Divine facts, we 
must ourselves be in intelligent possession of those 
facts : — before we can affirm scientifically, that the 
sun revolves around the earth, we must be prepared 
to prove, that the earth does not turn upon 
its axis. 

Now, what finite mind is competent to deal with 
this problem of evil ? Evil, as we cognize it, is not an 
absolute but a relative idea, but, though a relative 
idea^ it is a Divine Creation^ and we are no more 
fitted to pronounce upon its nature, its meaning or 
its functions, than an insect is fitted to discuss those 



The Plmtomenal a7td the Real. 125 



characteristics, when applied to St. Peter^s at Rome, 
no, not half as much so. 

Observe that rough, uncultivated lot of neglected 
land ; it attracts your notice only by its unsightliness ; 
pass it by a week hence, and you will see, instead of 
weeds and sand, in one place a confused, disorderly 
pile of bricks, in another barrels of lime, in another a 
mass of unhewn timber. Let an Indian, fresh from 
the forest, be introduced into this collection of crude 
material, and will he be prepared to credit civilization 
with any superiority over his cavern in the rocks, or 
his hovel in the woods ? Can you tempt him away 
from his wigwam by such a display of order and 
refinement, as this encumbered lot will afford him? 
He may listen to your description, and wonder at 
your rhetoric, but will he not return to his accus- 
tomed destitution, thankful to escape from your un* 
meaning and wholly gratuitous harangue? Precisely 
so is it with us, in the midst of all our civilization 
and refinement, until we are able to cognize a higher 
life than that of the senses ; until the material has 
begun to confess itself the mere phenomenon that it 
is, and the winged and fiery spirit " within us has 



126 



Education. 



recognized and asserted its claim to substantial and 
perpetual existence. As long as we deny the induc- 
tions of astronomy, we will continue to believe that 
the sun rises ; as long as we are deaf to the language 
of geology, we shall maintain that the Heavens and 
the Earth were made out of nothing, in six solar 
days ; as long as we are regardless of the deductions 
of common sense, we shall be content to assume that 
the mighty luminaries which surround us were 
formed to give light to this infinitesimal atom of a 
peopled earth ; and, in like manner, as long as we are 
capable of believing that matter is substantial, and 
that Spirit, which moves, which controls, which 
shapes and utilizes it, is evanescent, so long, we shall 
be guilty of the fatuity of living for time and ignor- 
ing eternity — necessarily and consistently willing to 
sacrifice Truth and Purity, Honor and Love to the 
paltry satisfactions which can be gleaned from the 
debris of a wasted and abused existence. 

What we need, then, is not a more diligent, orderly 
and profitable use of the senses, not a more serious 
and vigorous grappling with the political, moral and 
social difficulties, which mar the perfection and spoil 



The Phe7io7nenal and the Real. 



127 



the symmetry of our short apprenticeship, but a clearer 
apprehension and nobler use of that apprenticeship ; 
not to treat a joiner's workshop as a well-furnished 
drawing-room ; not to expect or even desire order, 
grace and ease, amidst the tools and litter which are 
involved in their production ; not to live as if the 
school-room were the play-ground or either of them 
were home : — but, by a strong, manly, scientific use 
of our faculties and our materials, to put things in 
their right places, and, by patient continuance in right 
thinking and well-doing, seek for the glory and the 
permanence which we so instinctively covet. Just 
here, I recall an incident which bears pertinently upon 
our subject. It was at a meeting of literati, gathered 
for the purpose of general discussion ; and the ques- 
tion under immediate consideration was Principle, its 
meaning and force : — It was treated in a rather vague 
and indefinite manner, until it came to a gentleman, 
who was considered as holding somewhat the position 
of a patron of literature and learning in society. He 
expressed himself in substance, as follows :■ — " Gen«* 
tlemen, of course we must have Principle ; it would 
not do to be without Principle in a community ; but 



128 



Education. 



there come occasions^* — I will not finish the sentence ; 
the bitterest sarcasm could go no farther in exposing 
the utter rottenness of merely human profession, the 
deliberate hardihood with which men look each other 
in the face, when enunciating and adopting a fallacy 
which a child could detect ; the unfaltering resolution 
with which clear-headed, intelligent men consent to 
an equivocation, which is supposed to involve the 
interests of an individual or a fraternity, sacrificing 
Character, Individuality, Honor, Manhood and Truth 
in an utterly futile effort to bolster up a false position, 
or to silence an upbraiding conscience.* Can it be 
supposed, can any mind, not already pledged to 
materialism, really believe, that the idea of a God, of 
an intelligent originator, conductor, controller of the 
universe forms any part of such a scheme of existence 
as this ? That in a real world, a final condition of being, 
deceit and hypocrisy, lying and stealing, treachery 
and falsehood can be intended to thrive and prosper, 
as for a time they seem to do here ? Surely, when 
men who have adopted such a system, and formed 



^8ee Hans Andersen^s story of '*the King^s new clothes.^' 



The Phenoinenal and the Real, 129 



their characters upon such a model as this, profess to 
believe in a God, it cannot be the God of the New 
Testament ; it cannot be even the God of the Bramin 
or the Budhist, of Zoroaster or Confucius, but some 
demon, from the purlieus of the nether chaos, with a 
mission of delusion for the ears of those who, believ- 
ing in lies, have enrolled themselves among the wor- 
shipers of the father of lies. 

Principle is a word which belongs, alone, to a real 
world ; it involves the idea of stability, of perma* 
nence ; it has no respect to time or place or circum- 
stance ; it is, like its Author, unchangeable, the same 
yesterday, to-day and forever ; it is founded upon a 
rock — the Rock of Ages — and neither the phantasms 
of earth, nor the gates of hell can ever prevail against 
it ; the sea and the waves may roar, but it remains 
immovable; combinations and unholy alliances may 
storm the walls, but the w^alls are of adamant, and 
Infinite power holds the citadel ; its strength is to sit 
still ; its method of progress is masterly inactivity : 
its Divine momentum is resistless energy ; and it 
laughs to scorn the insensate bellowings of Maenadic 
mobs. If there is a God in the universe, Principle is 



i 



130 



Education. 



inscribed upon His banner; if there is a Creator of 
men, Principle is His eternal motto ; if there is a 
Heavenly Father, Principle ensures and perpetuates 
His paternity ; if there is a Saviour of the world, Prin- 
ciple is the corner-stone of His salvation ; if we have 
two natures, Principle, alone, attests the higher ; if we 
are men and not beasts, it is upon Principle, alone, 
that our claim can be established ; and if we are 
immortals, it is because the Principle within us can- 
not die. 

Men have felt themselves justified, by their social 
experience, in drawing a distinction between policy 
and Principle; like the Roman moralist, they adhere 
to the jtisttim as long as it suits their purposes, but 
when it fails, or rather, seems to fail, they fall back 
upon the utile ; as long as Principle can be perverted 
to countenance the plans and projects of a narrow and 
selfish utilitarianism, they will consent to patronize it, 
but when it frowns, as sooner or later it assuredly 
will frown, upon selfishness and narrow-mindedness, 
they cast their scruples to the wind, and adopt a 
more generous and liberal Policy. As long as it is 
convenient to be men, as well as to assume the form 



The Phenome7ial and the ReaL 131 



and circumstance of manhood, they are willing to 
combine the two, but when manhood means the ex* 
ercise of courage, faith, patience and hope, and the 
endurance of neglect, obscurity, poverty and loss, 
while they resolve to retain the name, they adroitly 
change the nature of their title, and manhood then 
comes to mean success, distinction, wealth and power, 
and, what is perhaps the most painful aspect in which 
this human defection presents itself, even those 
adventurous spirits which have made an effort to 
realize their convictions regard with a mixture of 
envy and indignation a success so pitiful, an attain- 
ment so degrading, purchased at a price so infinitely 
beyond their value. 

Is it not enough to possess the substance? Must 
we have the shadow too ? Is it not enough to look 
within, and find there the foreshadowing of Honor, 
Truth, Purity, Manhood and Love? Must we also 
enjoy the results ? Must we pluck the fruit while 
the tree is only in blossom ? Must we luxuriate in 
the bowers of autumn while the snows of spring still 
linger on the hillsides? Manhood indeed ! Many an 
honest school-boy could teach us better, many a 



132 



Education. 



pensioner upon the bounty of a university, who 
studies in his attic and starves upon his commons, 
with nothing but faith and hope to cheer him in his 
humiliation and his penury, might look down, from 
the divine heights of sorrow, upon our aimless 
and meaningless discontent, with pity, almost with 
contempt. Shame upon our self-deceptions and 
our dilettanteism ; would it not be better, happier, 
nobler for us to take up our parable and say, let 
who will be rich, I will be as poor as honesty re- 
quires me to be ; let who will be great, I will be as 
humble as modesty constrains me to be ; let who 
will be distinguished, I will be as obscure as truth 
compels me to be ; I have counted the cost of all 
this, and I would not give one ray of the light of 
Truth upon my inner vision for all the ignes-fatui, 
which emphasize while they reveal the gloom of this 
nether valley. 

Mankind is a gregarious unit ; in itself, unchanged 
and uninspired, it is one undistinguished mass of 
festering corruption. Hear the arraignment brought 
against it by one who knew it well, both socially 
and introspectively. 



The Phenomenal and the Real. 



133 



Oh man ! thou feeble tenant of an hour, 

Debased by slavery or corrupt by power, 

Who knows thee well, must quit thee with disgust, 

Degraded mass of animated dust ; 

Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat, 

Thy smile hypocricy, thy tear deceit ; 

By nature vile, ennobled but in name, 

Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame/' 

Hear another voice, from the far-off ages of pro- 
phetic inspiration, 

Oh ! that I had, in the wilderness, a lodging- 
place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my 
people and go from them ; for they be all adulterers, 
an assembly of treacherous men, and they bend 
their tongues, like their bows, for lies, and they are 
not valiant for the Truth upon the earth, but they 
proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, 
saith the Lord. Take ye heed, every one, of his 
neighbour, and trust not in any brother, for every 
brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour 
will walk with slanders, and they will deceive, every 
one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth ; 
they have taught their tongues to speak lies, and 
weary themselves to commit iniquity." 



134 



Education. 



Descend from the prophet to the preacher, what 
says the Apostle of the Gentiles ? 

" And even as they did not like to retain God in 
their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate 
mind, to do those things which are not convenient ; 
being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, 
wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness ; full of 
envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity ; whisperers, 
back-biters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, 
inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 
without understanding, covenant breakers, without 
natural affection, implacable, unmerciful/* 

Finally, hear the judgment passed upon his race 
by a noble and loving spirit of later days. 

Fenelon, the St, John of modern times, the man 
whose heart seemed incapable of any other emotion 
than Love, gives this advice to his beloved pupil, 
'*Let men be men, that is, weak, vain, inconstant, 
unjust and assuming. Do not disturb yourself. 
Inure yourself to what is unreasonable and unjust.'' 
Such records as these, coming from the highest 
types of the race, who at the same time confess 
themselves to be in the same category, clearly 



The Phenomenal and the Real. 135 



warrant the assertion, that the defect is universal, 
that the incurable disorder is the inheritance of 
every child of Adam, and that the only specific lies 
in those effectual words of the leper, *'Lord, if thou 
wilt, thou canst make me clean." 

But while this degraded condition of humanity is 
universal, the sufferers can be divided into two 
classes ; those who wish to be healed, and those who 
do not ; those who desire to be free, and those who 
hug their chains ; those who invoke the healing 
power, and those who reject it. 

Looking at existence in this light, I can see noth- 
ing but justice and love in the awards of our Crea- 
tor. A rational being, privileged with a choice? 
and with all the consequences of this choice set 
fairly before him, furnished also with intelligence to 
apprehend those consequences, can have, it seems 
to me, no just cause of complaint against his Maker. 
His rational powers involve and justify the onus of 
a choice, and if he find the responsibility too great, 
and decline the gift ; if he feel the onus of the 
choice too heavy, and forbear to make it ; if he 
rest upon the assumption, that the sacrifices of his 



136 



Education. 



higher and the enticements of his lower nature 
present an alternative which he has not the cour- 
age to encounter, if he prefer a well-filled trough to 
the wings of an eagle, he, surely, should be the last 
person to upbraid the generous Power which, while 
offering him a choice, has carefully provided that 
that choice should be respected. It will be found, 
I think, when we come to look down upon human 
existence from the heights of divinized intelligence 
that there never was, in the internal structure of 
the man who has consented to his degradation in 
the scale of being, anything distasteful or degrading 
in the mode of being he has voluntarily adopted. 
The scientist may still exult in protoplasm, as the 
ultimatum of his physical researches ; the meta^ 
physician or the theologian may still see no differ- 
ence between reason and the human faculty of 
ratiocination ; the sensualist may still regard the 
senses, as the only possible inlets of enjoyment, and 
the worldling be quite content with the gewgaws 
and triumphs of social existence ; but, as none of 
these things are immortal, the experience of their 
votaries must be in accordance with that defect. 



The Phenomenal and the Real. 137 



But Truth is immortal ; Love is immortal ; Heaven 
is immortal ; they are immortal because they are 
divine, and the divine cannot perish, nor can any 
being, into whom the divine has entered as an inte- 
gral element of his nature. 

I have been careful, I think, not to do injustice to 
those who reject the experiences of a spiritual life, 
as visionary or fanatical, because I am unable to 
analyze and am forbidden to judge them. My con- 
troversy is with opinions, not men, with the 
premises, and not the logic or the logician, and my 
objections to the conclusion are technical, not per- 
sonal ; as long as we are fellow travellers towards 
the same inevitable goal, it is perfectly permissible 
to discuss, in an amicable spirit, what may await us 
beyond, and I am too conscious of my own incom- 
petence, to attempt to dogmatize to my equally in- 
competent neighbour, or to criticise his viaticum, 
his vehicle or his luggage. To my apprehension, 
matter is not even the skin but simply, as Carlyle 
expresses it, the clothing of our Me ; or according 
to Goethe, the garment whereby we see God, and 
spirit the only rational reality. I see nothing in 



138 



Education, 



human life to warrant a serious and life-long struggle, 
but its bearing upon an eternal state. If there is 
no such state, though I may not feel at liberty to 
throw away my life, inasmuch as it may involve 
other purposes and issues of which I am utterly 
ignorant, yet it has no charm, no attraction for me ; 
I am willing to endure it, because I cannot divest 
myself of the belief, that it has been assigned to me 
by a higher, and, as I cannot but believe, a benevo- 
lent power ; but if this is all, my part in it shall be 
only endurance, nothing more ; I will not contend 
for its prizes, because they cannot satisfy me, and 
they cost more than they are worth ; I will not com- 
plain of its evils, because according to Antoninus, 
they are either endurable or consuming, and they do 
not touch my real being ; and I will not cut it short, 
because, in despite of skepticism, there is something 
within me which says with resistless power, **wait 
and see and because, after all that impatience 
may urge, doubt involve, or fear suggest, there is, 
beneath it all, a settled belief in an infinite Father, 
who loves his wayward children, and is fully able to 
take care of them. 



The Phenomenal and the Real. 139 



For myself, until I am called to something better, 
it is sufficient that even here, in this embryonic 
existence, I find within me a power of expanding 
thought, and around me, engraven upon my prison 
walls, hieroglyphic prophecies of unbounded de- 
velopment, and I do not consider it an unreasonable 
demand upon my faith and patience, that I should 
await, in trustful abandonment, my death-birth into 
the world of eternal realties. 

''^Tis the sunset of life gives this mystical lore ; 
And coming events cast their shadows before.^' 

Behind me is the Aurora, contending fitfully with 
the gloom of an Arctic night ; but before me is the 
crepuscular dawn, announcing the rising of a Sun, 
that shall never set. 



MIRACLE 



The controversy between the material and the 
spiritual has prevailed, so far as we know, in some 
shape or other,through all time, and, in their zeal for 
their opinions, the controversialists have been driven 
to extremes, unwarranted by either science or revela- 
tion. Creation, involving a superhuman condition of 
being, presents, in its simplest and most tangible form, 
the question upon which the controversy turns — is 
there anything above material man? Is there a Creator? 
And, if so, what is the proof? The usual and most 
direct answer to this question has been — ^^Miracles'^^ — 
"an exhibition of superhuman power necessarily in- 
volves a superhuman agent/' The question, pre- 
sented in this form, gives the skeptic an advantage of 
which he is not slow to avail himself ; he denies, at 
once, that there is any legitimate proof, conformable 
to the canons of evidence, that such power has ever 
been exhibited, and I think that an honest examina- 
tion of those canons will compel us to assent to this 



Miracle, 



141 



position; I do not think that the technical proof of 
miracles is sufficiently established to warrant us in 
building upon them the claims of the Christian re- 
ligion : I do not think I would be justified, either in 
foro conscientice, or in foro intelligentice^ in assuming 
the truth of Christianity upon the ground of its re- 
corded miracles ; not that there can be any rational 
doubt of the actual performance of the miracles, but 
that the proof lies in another direction; not in 
direct evidence, depending upon personal expe- 
rience and which alone can convince the skeptic, but 
in inferences and deductions which, however indi- 
rect, are satisfactory to an unprejudiced and rational 
understanding. 

If, then. Miracles are not available, upon what are 
we to rely for our confidence in a system upon which 
the hopes of humanity are so vitally based ? 

I reply, upon the system itself. The relationship 
between the religion and the miracles is now reversed; 
at first, the miracles were needed as a foundation for the 
rehgion ; now, we credit the miracles upon the testi- 
mony of the religion. Christianity, once, from the 
very nature of the case, despised, hated and scouted 



142 



Education. 



from the world, has assumed the supremacy, and 
willingly or unwillingly, sincerely or hypocritically, 
men find themselves compelled to acknowledge its 
claims. 

The person of Christ, the doctrines of Christ, the 
life of Christ have come down to us through years of 
searching probation, and, under their influence, we 
have learned too much to be able, with due regard to 
our intelligence and our moral sense, to ignore or re-' 
ject them. Never man spake as this man, was the 
testimony of reluctant hearers, and the universal ac- 
clamation of all subsequent witnesses is, never man 
lived and acted as this man, and, I think, we may 
safely add, never man could live or act or speak as 
this man. 

This dictum, however, requires to be presented in 
a more comprehensive and statistical form, though, 
after all, its force will depend entirely upon the men- 
tal status of those to whom it is addressed ; opinion 
cannot be coerced, and a proposition is valueless when 
its premises are denied. 

Under this reservation then, I maintain, that the 
life, the teachings and the death of Christ cannot be 



Miracle. 



143 



reconciled with the principles and the conduct of a 
merely natural man. Human nature is innately and 
universally selfish ; there may be different degrees of 
this inherited and universal characteristic, but no 
simply human being is wholly without it, nor is it pos- 
sible for any one to cast it off, until he has been raised, 
by some higher influence, above the ordinary necessi- 
ties and apprehensions of his race; constitutionally 
selfish, and his constitutive elements must be changed, 
before he can breathe in a higher atmosphere ; it is 
not a question of degree, but of kind ; a man may 
profess to be unselfish ; he may strive to be so ; he 
may even imagine that he is so, but a very little care* 
ful self-inspection will convince him, that he has only 
succeeded in concealing his selfishness from super- 
ficial observation, and that when the crucial test is 
applied, it will reappear with original if not increased 
malignity. But, in four different naratives of his life^ 
varying in style, manner and matter, there does not 
appear, directly or indirectly, a single instance in 
which Jesus Christ acted from any motive of self- 
consideration. 

He declared, from the first, that he came, not to do 



144 



Education. 



his own will ; and he never seems to have been driven 
or enticed from that position. By a slight attention 
to his personal interests his life might have been 
made easy and prosperous ; he had but to make him- 
self agreeable to the dominant class among his peo- 
ple, to avoid whatever ran counter to their prejudices 
and their interests, to fall in with their assumed supre- 
macy and their monopoly of sanctity and virtue, to 
leave things as he found them, and consent to shut 
his eyes to the falsities and the perversities to which 
they had subjected the religion of their great leader, by 
their traditions and their dogmas, and all would have 
been well; he would have been recognized as a Rabbi, 
and honored as a man sent from God; or if his aspi-- 
rations had taken a different turn, and he had yielded 
to the common people when they wished to take him 
by force to make him a king, he might have succeeded 
as a revolutionist, and been chronicled as a hero, and, 
as a mere man, he must, in accordance with all human 
instincts, and in obedience to every impulse of his na- 
ture, have taken one or the other of the courses thus 
suggested. Not only was it impossible for a mere 
man to have fulfilled the conditions of Christ^s exist- 



Miracle. 



145 



ence, but no human intellect could even have excog- 
itated those conditions, or imagined such a life ; but 
his thoughts were not as our thoughts, nor his ways 
as our ways, and he selected, not the natural path, 
not the path which human instincts would have in- 
dicated, but one which led him through opposition 
and enmity, through derision and contempt to Geth- 
semane and the cross. In this view of the case, it seems 
to me to require a far greater fund of credulity to 
deny than it does to accept the divinity of Christ. 

But this is not all ; Christ, while he utterly de« 
spised and rejected human distinctions, under every 
form, both religious and political, persistently claimed 
divine authority. All the demi-gods of earth accepted 
complacently enough the honors which were ascribed 
to them by their servile adorers ; but the divinity of 
a Herod or an Alexander was too brutally betrayed 
by their own evil passions and selfish aspirations to 
enable society at large to endorse the blasphemous 
ascription ; and it is only permitted to remain upon 
the records of the race in the form of a self-refuting 
blasphemy: but when the calm, dignified, unfaltering 

assumption, ^'I came down from Heaven," proceeds 
7 



146 



Education, 



from the Hps of him who spake as never man spake, 
who ventures to mock or gainsay? A feeble demur, 
as to the nature and extent of the manifest divinity, is 
uttered by some honest thinkers, puzzled by the ap- 
parent anomaly of ^^God manifest in the flesh," but 
the doubt extends not to the claimant, but only to the 
meaning and interpretation of the claim. So far from 
there being any dignified and well sustained rejection 
of Christianity, we find one of the boldest and most 
outspoken revilers of ecclesiastical pretentions, who 
was withheld by no sensitive scruples from denounc- 
ing whatever he considered as unauthorized assump- 
tion, while dealing with the Apostles and early pro- 
pagators of Christianity as with fallible, and often- 
times erring, and sometimes even reprehensible men, 
never referring to the Founder of the religion but with 
the utmost reverence and admiration, and asserting, 
as his motive in writing, a desire to rescue the name 
and the religion of Christ from the misconceptions 
and misrepresentations of ignorant and presumptuous 
partisans. 

It was Lord Bolingbroke's intelligence, rather than 
his heart, that paid this tribute to the man of Galilee ; 



Miracle. 



147 



he was too well practiced in the school of casuistry, 
not to know, that the position of that immaculate man 
was unassailable. 

I have spoken of the life and the person of Christ ; 
one word with regard to the doctrine, in reference to 
which it will be sufficient to notice a single passage in 
his sermon on the mount. Ye have heard that it was 
said by them of old time, thou shalt love thy neigh- 
bour, and hate thine enemy, but I say unto you, love 
your enemies." The application of this passage to 
the present enquiry is simply this, that it implies, in 
the conduct of those who conform to the requirement^ 
an exercise of spiritual power quite as miraculous 
and far more significant than any of those material 
miracles which prove such a rock of offence to the 
magnates of modern science. I am firmly convinced 
that any man of fair intelligence and simple honesty, 
to whom this requirement should be presented, would 
unhesitatingly reply, "I cannot do it and whenever, 
therefore, any frail mortal finds himself enabled, by 
the divine presence within him, to obey this command, 
he is compelled to recognize, and authorized to as- 
sume the influence of superhuman energy, working, 



148 



Education^ 



not indeed a material miracle, but a similar result in 
a higher sphere of existence. 

Such a divine interposition is distinctly assumed by 
the sacred writer in that remarkable passage, **for 
scarcely for a righteous man would one die, yet, per- 
adventure, for a good man some would even dare to 
die, but God commendeth his love to us, in that, while 
we were yet sinners, (that is, his enemies) Christ died 
for the ungodly," Men excuse themselves from 
obedience to the command by this plea of impossi- 
bility, but they would soon be convinced of the 
weakness of the plea, if they could only realize that 
the same power, which once wrought miracles for 
the healing of the body, is still present, in a higher 
form, to renovate and vivify the soul, to enable men 
to overcome nature by the cultivation and exercise of 
a more potent and unfailing energy. 

Such is the character of Christ, such the impression 
which his life and his teachings have left upon the 
world; to go back, then, and criticise those gross ma- 
terial miracles which, alone, could meet the require- 
ments of a grossly material age, of a people steeped 
to the lips in formalism and superficiality, whose only 



Miracle, 



149 



respect for law regarded its external sanction, and 
who were content, therefore, to circumvent it by any 
subterfuge which could be reconciled to its letter ; 
for us, at this day, to rest our allegiance to the purest, 
the highest, the most spiritual system which has ever 
been presented to the rational man as the guide of 
his life and the pole-star of his hope, to rest, I say, 
our belief in this system upon the truth or falsity 
of records which have fed the polemics of the world 
for nearly two thousand years, rather than upon a life 
far more wonderful in its spiritual significance than 
any mere extention of the scope of material possi- 
bility, seems, to a thoughtful mind, little short of 
trifling with a subject which claims, at the very 
least, respectful attention and intelligent investiga- 
tion. 

If we must needs apply the same test to the 
Christianity of the present day which the Jews applied 
to Christ himself, we should at least adapt our method 
to the requirements of the age ; we should remember 
that we stand upon a higher plane and necessarily em- 
ploy a more refined and spiritual criticism : the tests 
which in those days were supernatural are now super* 



150 



Education. 



human,^ We do not, now, seek to have water changed 
to wine, but we desire to see the vain, the frivol- 
ous and the selfish converted into the modest, the 
thoughtful and the considerate : we do not, now, ask 
to have the scales removed from our organs of sensi- 
ble vision; modern science can answer that demand; 
but we are amazed and delighted to find a man who 
could see no beauty in holiness, no attraction in vir- 



^NoTE, — **It would be as great a Miracle in grace to see a 
person full of himself, become in a moment dead to all self- 
interest and sensibility, as to see the child that went to bed 
last night, rise in the morning as tall and strong as a man 
of thirty. God conceals his operation in the course of grace, 
as well as nature, under an insensible succession of events, 
and by this means keeps us in the obscurity of faith/* — 
Fenelon, on the Cross, 

Note 2,— Owing to the peculiar depth of the Seneca 
lake in New York, its waters remain at nearly the same 
temperature all the year round, so that it is never frozen 
over in winter and the contact of its comparatively warmer 
water with the colder atmosphere produces a mist which 
hangs continually over the region, so that during the whole 
of the winter I passed there, I saw the sun only for a short 
part of one day ; now just suppose such a state of things to 
be constant and universal and would not that momentary 
display of the cloudless sun be considered a miracle by all 
rational observers ? 



Miracle, 



151 



tue, no worth in honesty, no power in truth, with his 
mental vision so restored as to exhibit to astonished 
observers a model of nobility and truth : we do not, 
at the present day, take a very lively interest in the 
legend of Daniel among the lions, but we feel a glow 
of cheerful hope for our race, when we witness a man 
with the same appetites and passions, the same hopes 
and fears with ourselves standing bravely by his con- 
science and his God at the expense of worldly advan- 
tage and social distinction : we do not, now, expect or 
hope to have our dead recalled to life by any potent 
divination ; He who alone was able to utter that con- 
juring word is no longer here to reenact the stupend- 
ous scene ; once for all he has withdrawn his material 
person from the world ; but he has left behind him a 
far more potent and welcome presence ; and many 
a loving wife, many a devoted mother can testify that 
under the benign influence of that unseen presence, 
duly invoked and patiently expected, '^this my son,^' — 
this my husband,- — 'Vas dead and is ahve again/' We 
are not much attracted or even surprised, in this day 
of scientific thaumaturgy, by the strange spectacle of 
a man walking upon the water, but it furnishes an 



152 



Education. 



inestimable encouragement in our struggle with evil, 
to behold a frail and erring man, passing safe and 
undismayed over the stormy sea of life, sustained 
by the same arm that was stretched out to rescue 
drowning Peter from the waves. 

Thomas Carlyle, in his own peculiar style,disposes 
of the miraculous in few but very conclusive words, 
which I repeat in substance though not with verbal 
accuracy • 

*'It were miraculous'' he says, "if I could, at 
this moment, stretch forth my hand and clutch the 
sun, but does miracle consist in miles of distance or 
pounds avoirdupois of weight ? does not the real, 
God-revealing miracle consist in this, that I can 
stretch forth my hand and clutch anything 
and to follow up and amplify the thought, is not 
nature with her marvels of telescopic and micro- 
scopic revelation, with her clouds and her sunsets, 
her constellations and her comets, is not man with 
his science and his mechanics, his inventions and his 
aspirations, his memories and his prophecies, with 
his wonder-working hand and his wonder-seeing 
spirit, is not existence itself enclosing in its three- 



Miracle, 



153 



score years and ten, suggestions of life, death and 
eternity, is it not all one vast, inexplicable, ever 
present, all confounding miracle ? And can it really 
come to this, that with the apprehension of all that 
is around tbem and within reach of the records that 
mind has left upon the pages of time, men can ven- 
tilate their thoughtlessness in discussions about the 
reality of miracles and questionings about the mode 
which the Creator has adopted or may adopt tore- 
veal himself to his rational creature, man ? 

For my own part, I freely confess, I rarely pass 
a day without some experience suggestive of a super- 
human presence in the ordering of events and the 
occurrence of unexpected issues and unlooked for 
deliverances. Yesterday the horizon was black 
with hopeless despair, the curtains of to-day have 
rolled up, and lo ! the sun shining in his strength. 
Yesterday a wall of insurmountable difficulty ob- 
structed the path, to-day a portal opens, unseen be- 
fore, and we pass through light of heart, with 
scarcely a suggestion of the supernatural occurring 
to the mind absorbed by material interests and enjoy- 
ments. In all our experience of life there is nothing 



154 



Education, 



more wonderful than the skill with which the mind 
is able, if it so desires, to exclude God from his uni- 
verse, the Creator from his creation. But why ? Is 
there anything gained by the effort ? Is a God- 
less world, a world of accident (terms utterly incom- 
patible), a transient, phenomenal, lawless world a 
pleasanter object of contemplation, a more desirable 
place of habitation, than the creation of a just, holy, 
and wise Creator ? Is it better to be a nameless bas- 
tard than the child of an infinitely loving Father ? 
and yet that is the condition to which a materializ- 
ing skepticism labors to consign us. 

Reason and logical precision assure us, that where 
there is order there must be an organizer, that crea- 
tion implies the control of a Creator, and that his 
control must be beyond our apprehension, and his 
acts involve crucial difficulties to our finite and re 
lative understandings; that the orbit of his law must 
be far outside of our petty horizons, and that when 
comet-like events occur, they will necessarily produce 
amazement if not consternation in all who do not 
view them through the telescopic medium of an en 
lightened faith. 



Miracle. 



155 



In fine, the only assent that can reasonably be 
given to the position of the skeptic involves a de- 
nial of its truth. There is no such thing possible as 
miracle, in the common acceptation of the word, be- 
cause, to the observing and leverential mind, all is 
miracle. It is not possible, to a thoughtful ob- 
server of nature, to select any of its phenomena as 
specially wonderful, because existence in its simplest 
form, in its most familiar phase, is supremely and 
awfully wonderful. Whether it be the sun in the 
heavens, or a blade of grass upon the earth; whether 
it be an infant of days, or an old man who has not 
filled his days; whether it be our introduction to 
the mystery of life, or our exit through the portal 
of death ; whether it be the dreams of the day or 
the visions of the night ; whether it be the statics 
orthe dynamics of our inexplicable existence, every- 
thing within, around and above us presents to the 
thoughtful mind a problem of wonder which it can- 
not solve and which can only be accepted by the 
understanding in the form of a divine paradox. 

There is no such thing as miracle because all is 
miracle. 



156 



Education, 



Law the Remedy for the Evils of Life. 
Human Law. 



What is Law ? It is an authoritative command 
with a sanction annexed ; without the sanction it is a 
rule or a command, but not a Law. As rational 
beings we are the subjects of two systems of Law, the 
divine and the human. Divine Law, as coming from 
a perfect source, is universal, immutable and its sanc- 
tion inexorable. Human Law, as the expression of 
an imperfect will, is partial, changeable and its sanc- 
tion uncertain. 

The ministerial profession undertakes to expound 
and promulgate the Divine Law, and the legal pro- 
fession is charged with the exposition and enforce- 
ment of the human Law. 

In both cases the word profession suitably expresses 
the extent of the obligation assumed, inasmuch as 
the advantages which are offered come to us through 
instrumentalities in all cases imperfect, in some, ma- 
lign. Passing by, for the present, the exponents of 



Human Law. 



157 



the divine Law, we propose now to say a few words 
about human Laws and their administrators. The 
Laws by which society is controlled are themselves 
necessarily imperfect, they originate in imperfect minds 
and are applied to cases imperfectly understood, and 
thus, they often increase the evils they were intended to 
correct ; but this defect, great as it really is, is trifling 
in comparison with the failure involved in the imper- 
fection of the administrators. Our media of com- 
munication in this undeveloped existence fail so en- 
tirely to express our thoughts and intentions that it 
is often possible to extract a meaning from our 
words, the exact opposite of that which they were in- 
tended to convey ; place such unreliable instruments 
in the hands of an adroit manipulator, whose sup- 
posed interest lies in subverting and distorting them, 
and it is easy to see how little we can depend upon hu- 
man Laws administered by human agencies ; and his- 
tory only two sadly illustrates the actual certainty of 
this rational probability. Living, acting and suffering 
as we do in such an apparently hopeless chaos of moral 
ideas, it is not to be wondered at that men should 
give up the contest, fall into the well-worn ruts of con* 



158 



Education. 



ventional accommodation, and sink at once their own 
individuality and whatever natural appetency for 
Truth they may inherit in a timid surrender to an as- 
sumed inevitable, and even those, who are in the main 
sincere, are often content to rest in a position which, 
though confessedly not the highest, is the only one 
which they consider attainable by human imperfec- 
tion. In pursuance of this concession, the attitude 
adopted by the legal profession seems to an on-looker 
to be somewhat of this nature. Right and justice 
are strong in themselves, they are in accordance with 
divine ordinances, and can lay claim to divine sup- 
port ; they pay due respect to the laws of the State, 
and, secure under her protection, are comparatively 
independent of individual support. But the unfortu- 
nate wrong-doer, the murderer, the thief, the liar, he 
is without the pale of human sympathy or divine 
approval, and, in his desperation, he appeals to us for 
sympathy and aid. Shall we turn our backs upon a 
fellow mortal in such an extremity as this ? Shall we 
commit him, without an effort, to the tender mercies 
of the soulless corporation whose laws he has vio- 
lated, or suffer him to be hanged unprepared, before 



Human Law, 



159 



the throne of relentless Justice, to meet the doom 
which awaits him there? 

This style of argument, specious as it is, will not 
bear inspection, it is ex parte and ad captandiun^ and 
it is only necessary to carry it out to its legitimate 
issues, to present it in its naked deficiency and show 
the other side of the question, to give it a quietus 
forever. 

Human existence is neither solitary nor gregarious, 
but social; it is the distinguishing characteristic of 
man, that he is a social being. But the social ele- 
ment in our existence, though primary and character- 
istic, is not always predominant ; the imperfection of 
our nature, which continually leaves us at the mercy 
of our selfish instincts, causes us, under certain cir- 
cumstances, to disregard our social duties and to pre- 
fer the demands of the individual to the just claims 
of society, and it is this strong and frequently over- 
powering tendency which constitutes the difficulty 
of the social problem. 

Paley, though erring so strangely in many points 
of his philosophy, is clear and unanswerable in his 
distribution of the claims of the community and the 



160 



Education, 



individual — of the general and the particular — upon 
civilized man. 

As individuals we need the protection of the Law^ 
but it is only as social individuals that we can secure 
that protection, and if we weaken the authority of 
society, if, to suit the interests of an aggressor, we 
break down the barriers which society has erected for 
the protection of her constituents, we insensibly sap 
the foundations of social order, and, sooner or later, 
will find ourselves in the predicament of the woods- 
man who, in divesting a tree of its superfluous 
branches, lops off the bough which supports him in 
the accomplishment of his object. 

But, we are told, the Law is too severe ; while it 
may be necessary for the protection of society and 
the security of order in general, in this particular 
case it is manifestly unjust, and it becomes our duty, 
as benevolent beings, to mitigate its needless severity. 

No doubt there are occasions when this is strictly 
true; but it has no logical bearing upon the question 
before us ; probably there never was a case in which 
the argument did not seem, to the offender, applicable 
to his own condition, and sympathizing counsel may 



Human Law. 



161 



soon be brought to adopt the same opinion. But let 
us analyze the case from the very beginning. A civil- 
ized community discovers that a certain crime, say 
forgery, is becoming very common among them, and 
much suffering, by innocent persons, is the conse- 
quence. Under the influence of this discovery, the 
Legislature passes an Act, inflicting a severe penalty 
upon the crime in question ; it is placed upon the 
statute book, and there stands, a warning to the of- 
fender, known and read of all men. In defiance of 
this solemn notice from the community of which he 
is a member, a needy individual replenishes his empty 
purse at the expense of a neighbour, who thus finds 
himself, not only a loser, but perhaps even a defaulter, 
by the criminal act of another, which he could nei- 
ther foresee nor provide against. Society has done all 
that she could do to protect her innocent member 
from such an outrage ; her law, and its penalty, both 
stand in clear characters upon her statute book, and 
upon the strength of this authority, the offender is 
arraigned and required to show cause why he should 
not suffer the penalty due to his crime. Of course he 
pleads Not guilty,'' and looks around for the most 



162 



Education. 



skilful talent available, for his defense ; he is skilfully 
defended, and sent forth in triumph, to pursue his 
nefarious practices in the community which he has 
defied, and his advocate has added another leaf to his 
laurels in defence of the — innocent ? 

What now becomes of your claim and my claim 
upon society, as our protector from robbery and 
wrong ; she has forbidden us to protect ourselves, 
and has assumed the solemn duty; what is the result ? 
Are we simply where we were before, with the insig- 
nificant loss of a few vile dollars, or as the sufferer 
may rather be disposed to consider it, with the sudden 
and unexpected disappearance of that hard-earned 
money, wherewith he hoped to live respectably, to 
support his family, to educate his children and to lay 
up something for fast approaching age ? Is this all ? 
It would seem to be bad enough, but it is not by any 
means all, nor even the worst. By far the worst is 
that society is degraded, has been set at naught and 
defied, and has proved herself incompetent to the pro- 
tection of her children and unworthy of their respect 
and affection ; that civilization has retrograded many 
degrees in her progress to perfection, and that, except 



Human Law. 



163 



in those cases where men have learned to rest upon 
something higher and stronger than society^ they 
have been driven to the conviction that truth, purity, 
and honor have no foothold in the world, and that 
the only safety lies in a cowardly surrender to organ- 
ized oppression. A few hundred miscreants once 
terrorized a mighty city, a few unprincipled plotters 
can still override a disintegrated and drowsy commu- 
nity. The success in both cases being due, not to the 
strength of the usurpers, but to the weakness of 
those who submit to their sway. 

But. to return to the argument, the Law is too 
severe. Well then, have it modified ; the same power 
that enacted it can easily remould it and mitigate its 
severity. Let the complainant carry his grievance to 
the law-making power and tell that body of the trials 
and temptations to which he is subjected by their 
inconsiderate harshness ; of the presumption of 
which he must be guilty in opposing his judgment to 
that of the collected will and wisdom of his fellow- 
citizens ; of the strain upon his intellect in devising 
some plausible ground for his defense of criminality : 
of the sophistries which he must employ ; of the truth 



164 



Education^ 



which he must conceal, of the falsehood which he 
must endorse ; of the officials which he must corrupt ; 
of the juries which he must pack; and all the para- 
phernalia of simulated justice which he must organize 
in order to conceal from public animadversion his de* 
fiance of the Law he had sworn to defend. Let him 
tell that august body, which represents the wisdom 
and the dignity of the State, and which has been 
called by the votes of fellow-citizens to the most 
responsible position which a public servant can occupy, 
that he craves relief from a position in which he finds 
his duties and his sympathies so strangely at variance, 
in which he must either leave an unfortunate fellow- 
being to the fate which he has wilfully and wickedly 
brought upon himself, or undergo an ordeal of ques- 
tionable tortuosity which may be sadly misunderstood 
by cavilling humanity. If the law-making body see 
fit to accede to his wishes no harm can possibly 
follow ; the particular law in question will be subjected 
to a process to which all human productions are 
necessarily liable, and the great principle of Law 
itself, by which the universe is sustained, will be pre- 
served in unsullied dignity and divine perfection. 



Human Law. 



165 



But if, on the other hand, the Legislature takes a dif- 
ferent view of the matter and refuses to grant his 
request, what then ? Which of the horns of his di- 
lemma shall he now select ? Shall he dishonor his 
State, set at naught her enactments, subject himself 
to a disgraceful ordeal, let loose a blood-hound upon 
society, encouraged in crime and strong in impunity, 
and enable him with brazen effrontery to answer an 
accuser, Yes, I have defied your Law, what are you 
going to do about it ?" Or shall he leave the male- 
factor to the justice he has outraged and the mercy he 
has forfeited, to the fate he has wilfully and knowingly 
invoked upon his own head, and the legitimate conse- 
quences of his own deliberate act ? Shall a breach 
be made and left open in the defences of the sheep- 
fold, and the captured wolf be let loose to enter in and 
destroy, or shall the breach be closed by the strong 
arm of the Law, and the safety of the flock be ensured 
by the destruction of the outlawed marauder ? 

Undoubtedly there is an appearance of kindliness 
and a show of sympathy for the suffering, when a 
reluctance is manifested to be " extreme in marking 
what is done amiss," but, in the case of a wilful 



166 



Education. 



breaker of the Law, it is a mere show, and will not 
bear intelligent inspection. It is certainly praise- 
worthy to indulge a forgiving temper in a case which 
only affects the private sufferer, though, even in such 
a case, benevolence should be exercised under the 
supervision of prudence and justice, and the tender 
heart be controlled by a sound judgment and strong 
will ; but when crime affects society, when a wrong 
doer is a public enemy, and has become, by his habits 
and his principles, a public nuisance, the man who 
undertakes to shield him, to come between him and 
the penalty which society has deliberately affixed to 
bis crime, becomes in effect particeps criminis,'' and 
should be held in the light of " an accessory after the 
act." 

When on-lookers see an injured person, under the 
influence of indignant passion, persisting in undue 
and brutal revenge, they naturally and justly inter- 
pose ; but if a property holder, finding his premises 
continually invaded, and his goods stolen, set spring 
guns in his enclosure, and give fair notice of the pre- 
caution, no one can justly accuse him of cruelty, or 
should be permitted to countenance or aid the maimed 



Human Law. 



167 



and detected marauder. Would it be anything but a 
mockery to say to the plundered sufferer, You may 
set spring guns if you like, but you should be careful 
not to load them 

No doubt it is a great temptation to an advocate, 
who is conscious of unusual ability, to utilize his 
powers in cases of difficulty, where others would be 
likely to fail, and, if such a person regard only him- 
self and his own reputation and aggrandizement, he 
will probably not be deterred, by any other considera- 
tion, from a display which will secure to him great 
personal advantage. But thoughtful men who have 
come to the conviction that they were not sent into 
this world to consult merely their own advantage, or 
to appropriate their endowments without respect to 
the obligations which constitute them social beings 
and lift them out of soulless animality, thoughtful 
men, everywhere and always, have been impelled by 
an overpowering inward inspiration, to subordinate 
self to the rights and requirements of Society, and to 
consecrate their powers by devoting them to the 
interests of that society to which their highest al* 
legiance, their supreme loyalty is justly due. If 



168 



Education. 



the control of Law is so intolerable, if we find our- 
selves so hampered and precluded from the free use 
of our faculties and the full exercise of our rights 
by the barriers which she has erected for the safe- 
guard of humanity, then let us no longer tamper 
with the question, let us boldly adopt the suggestion 
of Rousseau, and fall back upon natural rights and 
individual prowess ; but if the experience of centu- 
ries, the wisdom of sages, the cries of the oppressed, 
the instincts of humanity, and the precepts and 
examples of divinity all point to Law as the only 
remedy, yet available, for the evils of our ephe- 
meral existence, then let us adopt it, bravely, hon- 
estly, thoroughly, and cling to it manfully until we 
find a better. 

But the truth is, that the real difficulty does not 
lie in that direction. Every intelligent man knows, 
and most men will admit, that when a difficulty 
arises between an individual and the community, 
the former must give way. The interests of the 
many must prevail over the interests or rather the 
apparent interests of one ; most men will admit this 
and all good citizens will recognize the force of the 



Human Law. 



169 



principle, and submit to its requirements; but 
wrong-doers and their abettors are not willing to 
ackowledge a rule which interferes with their selfish 
principles ; they regard the State as an oppressive 
abstraction, as an organized despotism, and consider 
it perfectly justifiable to obstruct her processes and 
defy her authority whenever concealment or fraud 
or perjury will enable them to do so with impunity. 
Short sighted as this policy is, it is perfectly con- 
sistent with the intellectual status of the victims of 
selfishness, of that narrowness of mind which prefers 
adroitness to simplicity, cunning to wisdom,, success 
to justice, fraud to veracity, the individual to the 
community, the temporal to the eternal. 

I recollect being present at a colloquy between two 
acquaintances, in which one of the parties remon- 
strated against a method, proposed by the other, 
to secure certain pecuniary advantages. Don^t 
talk to me,** was the reply, of your hampering, old 
womanish principles; I go in for success." So do 
I," said the other, but what do you call success? 
Is it ten thousand dollars, or one hundred thousand, 
or a million ? If that is your standard, of course 
8 



170 



Education, 



there is nothing more to be said upon the subject ; 
human logic may change an opinion, but it cannot 
elevate a standard ; but, if that million is to be 
purchased at the expense of one atom of truth, of 
the most trifling infringement of the rights of the 
neighbour, of the demands of honor, or the warnings 
of conscience, I would rather sink the whole in the 
depths of the sea than soil my fingers with the 
touch of a single coin," 

And does it require any great effort of mind, any 
power of imagination, any depth of philosophy to 
convince a rational intelligence that there is no 
other view of human life and human morality at all 
consistent with wisdom and true manhood ? Can 
it be necessary to prove to a thinking being, that he 
has two natures, and that the difference in their 
value is infinite, that matter perishes, and that spirit 
is immortal, that silver and gold are corruptible, 
unsatisfying, burdensome, and that thought and its 
constituents, truth, purity, justice, honor and love 
are, in their very nature, indestructible ? No ! 
wherever there is mind it inevitably recognizes and 
enforces the distinction ; but mind is a gift and, like 



Human Law. 



171 



all other gifts, it must be estimated, exercised and 
cultivated or it will either perish in inanity or smoul- 
der in the ashes of a sophisticated intelligence ; and 
it is sad to see how, by the neglect of this precau- 
tion, men may walk about on God's earth veritable 
ghosts, literal appearances, out of which the sub- 
stantial element has long since departed, leaving 
only a few dying embers to eke out the last gasps of 
a fatuous existence. Tiirpis universo non congruens. 

Gouverneur Morris, in his diary in Paris during the 
revolution, records an interview with Mirabeau, and, 
while testifying to his great natural powers con- 
cludes his estimate with these emphatic words, His 
understanding is, I fear, impaired by the perversion of 
his heart/* and in conversation with a distinguished 
member of our own bar, now no more, I was both 
surprised and gratified by an apothegm the legiti- 
mate converse of the same impressive thought, " The 
pursuit of truth/' he said, enlarges the intellect/' If 
this be true, as cannot be doubted, what must neces- 
sarily be the condition of a mind habitually em^ 
ployed in the service of sophistry? Habitually subordi- 
nating truth, justice and honor to the factitious claims 



172 



Education. 



of absorbing individuality or overawing cliquedom ? 
And with regard to this last, it may be specially re- 
marked that, while individual audacity can be met 
and mastered by individual prowess, it requires su- 
perhuman power to encounter successfully a com- 
bined attack, and it is well for those who have pre- 
ferred their manhood to the protection of a clique — 
who decline to sink their individuality in the emas- 
culating ease afforded by unconditional pledges of 
support, that they have in reserve an unseen povver, 
which holds in check unrighteous combinations, and 
laughs to scorn the cunning of their petty devices. 

I would take this occasion to urge upon the con- 
sideration of young men, not yet enthralled in the 
net of partisanship, and whose minds are still fra- 
grant with the aroma of divine simplicity, whether 
any earthly object can possibly repay them for the 
loss of that self-respect and self-possession, which 
conscious integrity alone can afford, and the testi- 
mony of conscience alone ensure. Will it be noth- 
ing, think you, to be enabled to stand alone, amidst 
the ruin of fortune, the desertion of friends, the 
contempt of the prosperous, the plottings of the 



Human Law, 



173 



wily, the slanders of the unscrupulous, and the 
triumph of the unfriendly, in unshaken reliance 
upon the invincibility of Truth, and the immortality 
of her votaries? Can you be insensible to the un« 
utterable satisfaction of the standard-bearer who 
comes out of the fight disfigured by his scars, but 
with his banner aloft ? Will external pomp repay 
you for internal power ? Will wealth, will reputa- 
tion suffice you when honesty repudiates the one and 
truth the other ? 

I will not quote Socrates, I will not refer to a 
greater than Socrates. I will leave you to the whis^ 
pers of your better self, I will commend you to the 
warnings of conscience and the voice of God. 



174 



Education. 



Law the Remedy for the Evils of Life. 
Divine Law. 



An intelligent perception of the imperfection of our 
nature is not a pleasant experience. That we have 
in ourselves, no germ of virtue which can be culti- 
vated, by due personal effort, into a perfect out- 
growth, is a conviction not very flattering to our 
pride of selfhood ; nevertheless, all the intelligence 
and all the honesty of the human mind, whenever 
and wherever they have been permitted to de- 
velop themselves, have compelled it to make the hu- 
miliating confession ; humiliating, because, whatever 
may be the relative intellectual power of the thinker, 
that power must be attended by the simplicity of 
childhood, before it can be of any real avail in the 
pursuit of Truth ; and it is in this, as in many other 
departments of human life, that the justice and the 
impartiality of the divine arrangements are clearly 
exhibited. A slow but modest and teachable under- 



Divine Lazv. 



175 



standing will come sooner and more thoroughly to 
the perception of Truth than a brilliant intellect stag- 
gering under the consciousness of relative superior- 
ity : felicitous diction and faultless logic have tempt- 
ed many an aspiring genius into regions of thought, 
where the splendor of the dress served, only more 
perfectly, to conceal the skeleton beneath. 

We naturally view ourselves as relative beings, 
and it is necessary that we should do so in order to 
fulfil our relative duties ; but we have an absolute 
status as well, and it is from this point that we must 
take note of our characters, if we wish to elevate 
them in the scale of being; we must weigh ourselves, 
not against imperfect humanity, but against perfect 
divinity, if we wish to learn in order that we may 
modify our relationship to the divine. 

I confess that I am appalled in the presence of this 
necessity. It is easy enough to convince myself that 
I am better than this robber or that murderer, this 
liar or that swindler, though even here I may be 
mistaken, when opportunities and standards and hid- 
den motives are taken into consideration. But when 
I compare my best graces, my highest virtues, my 



176 



Education. 



purest motives with the holiness and the purity, the 
forbearance and the love which even I can attach to 
the all-perfect Creator, I do not find in myself much 
room for gratulation, even if I can resist the impulse 
to lay my mouth in the dust and cry ^^uncleanP 

Now, what am I to do with this over-powering 
sense of ill-desert ? Am I, even in a worldly point 
of view, willing to be the selfish, low-motived, narrow- 
minded creature that, in the depths of my conscience, 
I find myself to be? A reptile crawling upon the 
face of God's beautiful world — a discord in creation — 
^Hurpis universo non congruensf Or, finding that I can- 
not change the absolute fact, shall I take refuge — to 
use a military term — in a change of base, and content 
myself with a relative view of my condition which 
superficially — and only superficially — gives me a 
vague hope that I may possibly be not quite so low 
in the scale of being as some of my unfortunate fel- 
low victims, or, as Dr. Paley quaintly expresses it, 
just on the safe side of the very narrow line which sep- 
arates the lowest man in Heaven from the highest in 
Hell? Verily, if it comes to this, I feel that I would 
have a just right to decline altogether an existence 



Divine Law, 



177 



imposed upon my feebleness by an arbitrary^ 
irrational and utterly selfish power. 

But must it come to this ? Is there no accredited 
way in which the question may be so encountered, 
as to escape from a pessimism so revolting to all the 
best instincts of my being? Throughout recorded 
history, the highest types of the race, with one con- 
sent, insist that they have found one ; and, for my 
own part, I feel myself rationally compelled to adopt 
the view which, not only represents my own honest 
conviction, but comes to me endorsed by the noblest 
intellects and the purest spirits which have signalized 
and adorned humanity. 

The spirit of God, necessarily in contact with his 
rational creation, under the guise of reason and con- 
science, has given from the earliest recorded times, 
through the medium of inspiration, an authoritative 
assurance of his presence within us, and we see, in 
consequence, the mind of man historically developed 
through successive dispensations of gradually in- 
creasing brilliancy, until, in these latter days, the 
Revelation of Jesus Christ has perfected the system, 
by the announcement of a divine humanity, and thus 



178 



Education^ 



'^brought Life and Immortality to light** I say, has 
perfected the system^ because I believe that a diligent 
and honest examination of his record will convince 
any unprejudiced mind that in that announcement, 
all that could be done by the Creator, consistently 
with his supreme gift of rationality, has been done to 
enable a free spirit to attain the true end of his crea- 
tion. 

The Christian Revelation, coming to us, as it does, 
under the prepossessing title of a gospel, addresses 
us in perfectly honest simplicity ; it does not seek to 
attract our regard by any undue effort at conciliation; 
it tells us plainly that we were " born in sin,'* thus 
indirectly assuring us of course, that we are not re- 
sponsible for this apparently unfortunate introduction 
into our present existence, it simply states the fact 
without seeking to gratify our pride of intellect by 
any metaphysical explanation of its rationale ; it is 
enough that God has so ordained it. Even Paul, in 
his trained and masterful encounter with the Gentile 
and the Jew — the Roman and the Hebrew — while he 
fearlessly expounds all that has been revealed, never 
attempts to go behind the scenes, to account for 



Divine Law. 



179 



Revelation, or to reconcile the Acts of the Creator 
with the wisdom of the creature. Nay, but Oh, 
man," he expostulates with the objector, " who art 
thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed 
say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me 
thus 

It has been reserved for the growing intelligence 
of the race, vivified by the sunlight of centuries, to 
perceive that the whole system of rational existence, 
which raises man above the rest of creation, and 
makes him divine, would be overturned if any attempt 
to secure his reception of truth by outside interfer- 
ence were to put a slight upon his crowning glory, 
the freedom of his will. 

But this by the way. The point which now con- 
cerns us is the remedy, and, as our own consent and 
co-operation are involved in its successful application, 
this remedy is presented in a form, legible by a child, 
and yet, challenging the scrutiny of the manliest in- 
tellect. 

Let us address ourselves in good faith to the inves- 
tigation which it invites. 

We were born in sin,'' and for this involuntary 



180 



Education. 



evil we are of course wholly irresponsible, and we 
need not therefore seek to avoid the blame by impos- 
ing it upon some mythical first man who brought 
death into the world, and all our woe the maker of 
the world is quite able to bear upon his own shoul- 
ders the consequences of all his creative acts, and we 
need not feel called upon to put any strain upon our 
finite understandings, by taxing our ingenuity to ac- 
count for those acts. 

But if there is any mode presented to us, by which 
we can meet the evil and rid ourselves of an incubus, 
which presses so heavily upon us, dogging our foot- 
steps and embittering our existence, then, undoubt- 
edly, we are responsible for all that we suffer by re- 
maining wilful victims of its deadly blight. And 
here it is that the gospel of Christ comes to the res- 
cue, with absolute accuracy and plenary power ; and 
it does this as before remarked, with uncompromis- 
ing sincerity and confidence in the power of truth. 
It tells the patient plainly, you cannot cure your*- 
self, it is a spiritual disease whose diagnosis you 
cannot compass ; you did not create yourself, and the 
workings of that wonderful machine whose compli- 



Divine Law. 



181 



cations are involved in your existence, are far more 
beyond your comprehension than a steam engine is 
beyond the comprehension of an infant of days. 

You cannot cure yourself, but, by the same token, 
your Creator can ; he who formed the instrument can 
reform it at his will, and his benevolence is as inex- 
haustible as his power. If it was worth his while to 
create you at all, it surely is worth his while to sus- 
tain and perfect his creation, and to fulfil the promise 
of immortality implied in the gift of immortal in- 
stincts and premonitions. 

But, though the remedy which the Creator has of- 
fered for our congenital disease is given freely and 
with all the generosity and self-sacrifice of a loving 
parent, it is not given unconditionally ; though the 
condition still respects our rationality, it is not im- 
posed arbitrarily or to vindicate a creative right, but 
from the necessity of the case and entirely in the in- 
terest of the beneficiary, in order that his vital char- 
acteristic — his freedom of choice — should not be 
overridden, his rationality disregarded and he become 
an unconscious, involuntary reflector of the divine 
Omnipotence. The condition, therefore, which is 



182 



Education, 



necessary to vindicate his manhood and to indicate 
his free will in the premises, is that he manifest, by 
some unequivocal act, his desire for the remedy, and 
as the universal expression of desire is asking^ he is 
told to ^'ask and it shall be given/* 

Thus far the case is perfectly simple, the transac- 
tion, momentous as it is, is encumbered by no side- 
issues, but is presented in a form plain enough for 
the comprehension of the feeblest understanding. 
The main point — the patient's desire for cure—being 
thus secured, there is room now for all the satisfac- 
tions which may facilitate or alleviate the progress of 
the work ; information may be given, explanations 
conceded, and natural curiosity indulged, as to 
the mode of the interposition. What shall I 
ask for? is the question which now presents 
itself to the mind of the enquirer, and the answer 
comes with all the clearness and directness which 
the occasion demands. Remember now, it suggests, 
that you have dismissed sense and all its interests 
from your regard, and have set your feet upon 
higher ground ; you need no longer concern your- 
self about your material necessities, they are all in- 



Divine Law, 



183 



volved, with unerring accuracy, in the one single 
object which is set before you as the sum and sub- 
stance of your present requirements ; having passed 
safely over the first stage of your journey in search 
of the truth, the question which now arises is, as has 
been already suggested, what shall you ask for ? 
Your wants are legion, you are an embodied destitu* 
tion ; as your creator is inexhaustible fullness, so are 
you bottomless emptiness. Can such emptiness 
ever be filled ? Can such destitution ever be satisfied? 
**Open thy mouth wide'' says the word of inspiration, 
"Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it ; and if your 
reason demands a more specific answer to a question, 
in itself so broad and comprehensive, address your- 
self once more to the source of inspired wisdom, and 
you will there find a ready rejoinder awaiting your 
demand, for you will be met by such a clear, intelli- 
gent and altogether sufficient answer as is contained 
in the very words themselves of the divine man to 
whom we look as the author and founder of the faith 
which is now the standard of the advanced guard of 
humanity. '^If ye being evil," he said to the throng 
of hungering intelligences around him, ''If ye be- 



184 



Education. 



ing evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, 
how much more shall your Father in heaven give 
the /lolj/ sptril to them tha,t ask*/' and if your still 
unsatisfied reason requires a farther insight into the 
mode of so mysterious an operation, you are not left 
to the cold comfort of a dry submissive faith, but you 
are frankly and authoritatively assured that that spirit, 
that very spirit which you are thus urged to invoke, 
shall guide you into a// truth ; and finally, as the or- 
dained issue of this orderly and systematic evolution, 
this truth shall make you free indeed^ free of the uni- 
verse, not mere jail delivery, not a relaxation of your 
bondage to time and sense, not a withdrawal of the 
limitations of material existence, not merely passive 
freedom — the freedom of the will — but now at length 
as your complete emancipation from all the restraints 
of a created nature, Free agency \ because, being now 
in entire accord with the will which controls the uni- 
verse, you can safely be trusted to act as well as to 
will under the promptings of a divine initiative. It 
is perfectly true that in this stage of your existence 
you are nothing but an organized form of destitution; 
but you are in very serious error as to the nature and 



Divine Law. 



185 



seat of that destitution ; you imagine that it is merely 
a defect of your temporal existence — of your sensual 
nature ; but, if you will think a moment, you will 
easily perceive that you are mistaken in this view of 
your condition. The actual wants of the body are 
very few and easily supplied ; taking the world at 
large, its production far exceeds the wants of its in- 
habitants ; only equalize the distribution, and bring 
human desire within rational limits, and there would 
not be a destitute mortal on the face of the globe. 
The poverty which disgraces humanity is not charge- 
able upon nature, but upon man ; not upon what he 
is unable to produce, but upon what he is able 
and determined to appropriate, and thus clearly 
not upon our physical organization, but upon 
our spiritual nurture and its legitimate results, and it 
is in that direction that we must look for the origin 
and seat of our hopeless disorder. Our true poverty 
is not material but spiritual, it is rooted in that gnaw- 
ing worm of avarice — that " sacra fames atiri^'^ which 
an intelligent pagan abjured — that "vile yellow slave'* 
which an Indian nabob anathematized, which stimu- 
lates our appetite for gain, whether it be of money 



186 



Education, 



or of fame, of pleasure or of power, and indicates an 
utter want of confidence in the truth and the love of 
our Maker, and proves that the faith which we pro- 
fess is not confiding trusty but inoperative belief. It is 
a disease utterly incurable by any human specific, 
and which will only yield to the transforming influ- 
ence of the Spirit of God, enlarging the mental vision 
to the scope of a boundless horizon, and anticipating 
the judgment of that decisive hour when Time and 
Eternity shall stand at our bar and await our decision. 

Let this point be fairly settled and we are at once 
essentially free. The Spirit of God, dwelling within 
a man and animating his existence, precludes the 
possibility of restraint : the only rational ground for 
any curtailment lies in the interest of our eternal 
state, and, as that is secured by a radical change in our 
motives and aims, no reasonable indulgence need be 
denied us ; our desires being subordinated to our 
immortal interests may now be safely and gener- 
ously gratified. 

In the face of such an unanswerable demonstra- 
tion as this, taken word for word from our sacred 
records — those records which we ourselves profess 



Divine Law. 



187 



to consider sacred — how is it that intelligent beings 
can be content to remain in ignorance or indiffer- 
ence upon the only subject which is of any real im- 
portance to minds capable of immortal apprehen- 
sions ? How is it that we can not only undergo, so 
blindly and stupidly, our daily and hourly experi- 
ences, as to deny the possibility of miraculous inter- 
ference in the on-going of material existence, when 
the universe of matter is nothing but one stupend- 
ous, inexplicable miracle ; but, by the same wonder- 
ful power of self-stultification, can resolutely shut 
our eyes to the far more impressive display of 
superhuman activity in a revelation bearing, in its 
perfect adaptation to our spiritual demands, the 
impress of an all-embracing divinity. 

And, in this connection, permit me to remark as 
an obiter dictum,'' of how little avail human rea- 
soning — persuasive endeavor — has ever been found 
in matters of spiritual import. How can this be 
accounted for, except upon the concession, that 
there is a divinity astir within us? We yield to 
human demonstration when it is applied to mat- 
ters which concern the body, the external, the 



188 



Education. 



material, because relative considerations are here 
properly in place, and we are compelled to 
acknowledge the power of an intellect which is mani- 
festly superior to our own ; but, when the investi- 
gation involves a spiritual experience, we are con- 
sciously upon higher ground — in a superhuman at^- 
mosphere — and we instinctively reject all lower 
influences. When the divine is called into requisi- 
tion, created intelligences, differ as they may among 
themselves, sink into one dead level of impotence 
and insignificance, and, in an enquiry of this nature, 
we need, not candle-light, nor gas-light, nor even 
electric-light, but sunlight^ 

What every rational being proposes to himself is 
his ultimate and unchangeable welfare ; or in other 
words, as we cannot help feeling ourselves, in this 
stage of our development, in a region of change 
and decay,'* we irresistibly yearn for stability and 
perpetuity ; or, to express the thought metaphori- 
cally, we are travellers in a howling desert, and, we 
long for the permanence and security of home. 

But our ability to proceed on our journey to this 
home varies indefinitely. Our personal vigor, our 



Divine Law, 



189 



means of locomotion, our strength of will, the force 
of temptation and a thousand undefinable consider- 
ations (still speaking metaphorically) concur to re- 
lease the originator of our being from any possible 
charge of injustice in the distribution of his gifts, 
inasmuch as the ultimate need of each individual, 
that is, his ability to reach his journey*s end, which 
is the only proper object of his solicitude, is made 
to rest, not upon any question of gifts and graces? 
but solely upon the use made of them by the 
recipient. Not the possessor of ten talents, but 
he who has used his talents, whether ten or one, 
most faithfully — most in accordance with the will 
and wisdom of the giver — will be found highest 
in the scale of being, in that world of reality, whither 
we are all so rapidly hastening. 

It has been my lot to converse with men of very 
varying powers of mind upon the subject of our 
human existence, and the result of these colloquies — 
the impression they have made upon my mind — is 
distinctly this, that I have found more satisfactory 
views, clearer light, more unencumbered receptivity, 
freer thought, simpler and more lucid apprehensions 



190 



Education. 



of all the deeper questions of spiritual import, that 
IS, of infinite and absolute being, in minds of unpre- 
tending, self-respecting, truth-loving intelligence, 
than in minds encumbered with the conviction of 
their own relative profundity — in minds whose sat- 
isfaction lay in teaching rather than in learning, in 
dogmatizing rather than in seeking truth, in uttering 
themselves rather than in unfolding revelation. The 
finest intellect, by far, that I have encountered in 
my literary explorations, has given to the world an 
unequalled exposition of the relationship between 
man and his Maker, and yet the whole of that vast 
subject is contained, as in a vital germ of infinite 
expansion, in one simple utterance of divine inspira- 
tion. "In him we live and move and have our 
being.'* 

But what of all this unsatisfying fruit of human 
speculation ? Is there anything strange or paradox- 
ical in the conviction, that such a creation as man 
will not be left in the imperfect condition in which 
we find him in this prenatal term of his existence ? 
That an embryo of such limitless promise is assuredly 
intended to come to the birth? That the acorn will, 



Divine Law, 



191 



necessarily, expand into the oak ? That the shell 
must, eventually, yield to the pressure of organized 
vitality, which it encloses? If this be credulity, let 
us proudly and joyfully respond to a charge so 
agreeable to our reason and all our diviner instincts. 

In a symposium of learned doctors, held some 
years ago, at which the subject of a future life was 
under discussion, I remember that one of those who 
took part in the debate contended that the only life 
which remains for man beyond the grave is the 
unconscious aroma of his temporal existence — his 
transitory and evaporating contribution to the sum 
of being. Men have a right to their opinions, and 
we are subject to just censure, when we treat them 
with disrespect, but opinions are not accidental, 
they are the legitimate result of antecedent habits 
of mind, and when the previous life of a rational 
intelligence inclines him to deny posthumous exist- 
ence, it would not seem an unfair conclusion, that 
he mistrusts his preparation for that existence. 
Now, instincts are the very reverse of opinions, they 
are involuntary and intuitive, and indicate a divine 
presentiment, and the universal instinct of humanity 



192 



Education. 



IS the anticipation of a future existence; the deniers, 
if there be any, are an insignificant minority ; and 
when an accepted tradition is in accordance with 
an equally accepted revelation, it would seem to 
be the part of prudence, as well as of reason, that 
we should commit ourselves to the larger hope^ 

I began this essay by asking, what am I to do 
with this unsatisfactory existence ? And the answer 
comes with singular distinctness to my mind. Find 
out, if you can, its rationale, (and if you will you 
can); penetrate thoroughly, fearlessly, hopefully into 
its profoundest depths, and accept what you find 
there with the confidence of a child and the resolu- 
tion of a man. Never consent to an equivocation, 
never employ a sophism, never shrink from the 
adoption or the avowal or the practical application 
of a recognized truth. Step by step the solution of 
the mystery (which can only be reached through the 
medium of prayer) will unfold itself to your enlarged 
understanding, and you will find yourself standing 
upon firm ground, where once you saw nothing but 
mist and mirage. What has hitherto obscured your 
vision and encumbered your footsteps is, that you 



Divine Law, 



193 



have misunderstood the true order of the universe, 
and have conducted your investigations under the 
guidance of Ptolemy rather than of Copernicus. 
You have exalted sense into a primary element in 
creation, instead of relegating it to a subordinate 
position, and have listened to its teachings, as if it 
were the centre instead of the circumference of your 
intellectual system ; and you have thus deranged 
the whole process of your mental operations. 

Correct the mistake, reverse the order, regard life 
in its spiritual instead of its natural aspect, and you 
will find yourself, at once, emancipated from the 
trammels which now beset you, and poised upon 
tireless wings in a cloudless empyrean. The array 
of antagonism which now over-awes you will be 
brushed aside like the swarming insects of a sum- 
mer's day, and you will stand, alone if need be, like 
Perseus in the banquet hall of Atlas, fearless, with 
the Medusa-head of Truth in your golden satchel. 

It is not a hard condition, under which you are 
required to attain the freedom of the holy City of 
God, No dastard, no trimmer, no halter between 
two opinions can be admitted there ; he would find 
9 



194 



Education. 



himself utterly out of place ; he would neither un- 
derstand the language nor enjoy the intercourse, 
nor suit the manners of heroic spirits ; he would 
still yearn for the diet of falsehood, and gasp for the 
atmosphere of corruption, and his baleful presence 
would infect the very spirit of love, in which he 
would find himself immersed. Moses was required 
to take ofif his shoes upon soil hallowed by the vision 
of the burning bush ; even the Moslem is not 
permitted to enter the temple of his God, v/ithout 
performing the same reverential ceremony ; and the 
man, who has attained the beatific vision of truth, 
will lift up his heart in gratitude to God, that he 
has been required to pass his novitiate through a 
night of cold and sleepless vigilance, that he has 
been thought worthy to endure a baptism of fire 
and to take up his cross with hands washed clean 
in the waters of afifliction. 

Emancipation firom the trammels of sense, from 
the illusions of falsehood, from the limitations of a 
suppositary existence is an attainment so far beyond 
the reach of our present clouded imagination, that 
when it is experienced, we shall only be amazed at 



Divine Law, 



195 



the msignificance of the price at which it has been 
purchased, and it will add another throb to our 
emotion of thankfulness, that we have thus been 
permitted to co-operate in the work of our own 
liberation. Even here, the spirit of the novice is 
sometimes so exalted that he can, with entire sin- 
cerity, adopt the utterance of the ancient martyr, 
Ye look for miracles, behold one now, these flames 
are to me a bed of roses.'^ 

To the desert or the cell 
Let others blindly fly, 
In this evil world I dwell, 
Nor fear its enmity ; 

Here I find a house of prayer, 
To which I inwardly retire ; 
Walking unconcerned in care, 
And unconsumed in fire. 



196 



Education. 



Good and Evil. 



There is no Evil in the work of God ; 

Evil is relative, and a judgment 

Of the finite mind, forming a back-ground 

To its relative good, and thus confined 

To the narrow bounds of our existence, 

And offering to man a battle-field 

For his struggle upward to perfection. 

There is no presence of this human evil 

In the mind of God. When he saw his work, 

He pronounced that it was altogether good ; 

And who shall gainsay what he hath said ? 

And how could it be otherwise than good ? 

How could the work of the all-perfect 

Be otherwise than perfect, when he spake, 

And it was done, and all the sons of God — 

The spirits who live in Him, and know His will, 

That it is wise and holy, shouted for joy ? 



Good and EviL 



Through the veil of matter, through the mask 
Of natural change and evolution, 
The eye of pure intention and trustful 
Observation can recognize and grasp 
The blissful end of all ; and those to whom 
It hath been given, thus to live in light, 
And by sight (not faith) to hold communion 
With the eternal mind, from whence all things 
Evolve, and to feel, by conscious contact, 
The blessedness wrapt up in pain and loss 
And sorrow, whence, alone, the soul attains 
Self-knowledge — knowledge of the imperfect- 
Foreshadowing, by logical converse, 
The perfect ; all such have learned to look 
Upon this life, with joyful recognition 
Of the Creator's hand, turning alljevil — 
The mortal child of time — to good, which is 
Immortal — the essence and evolvement 
Of eternity. 

What then is Evil, 
But an illusive incident, ordained 
For purposes divine, in the process 



198 



Education. 



Of a never-ceasing evolution, 

Not uncostly, without pain or effort 

By the Creative hand, but involving 

Labor pains, as of woman in her travail ? 

For we do not serve an idle Deity, 

A God luxurious or self-centred, 

Having no sympathy with His creatures, 

Aloof, beyond, above, apart from all 

The agony and strife imposed by nature 

On her offspring man, cold and calm in his 

Unapproachable, serene omnipotence, 

Smiling, while he hears the cries ascending 

From the tumultuous earth, where misery, 

Fear and hate run riot, and where the slave 

Of a "vile golden slave*" counts his profit. 

Dripping with blood and tears, and vainly deems 

Himself the master of the worshippers 

Who haunt his palace, ready to lay siege 

And sack, when the master-fiend cries havoc. 

And lets slip" the hateful, envious crew 

To revel in the immemorial hall 



*GoLD so-called by an East Indian who lost Ms health in accumu- 
lating it. 



Good and Evil, 



With hoofs of swine, whose only reverence 
Springs from fear, and its fierce offspring, hate. 
We serve a God, whose eye takes in the whole, 
And governs all, with perfect oversight, 
A patient, suffering, Father-God, 
In loving sympathy with His children , 
Who bore them on the cross of Calvary, 
And bears them on His heart in Paradise. 

Good and Evil, as they stand in open 
Contradiction, are relative ideas. 
Not absolute ; evil is not absolute ; 
Good absolute, is God, without another ^'^ 
But constituting and embracing all, 
The all of life, the all of death, at once 
The fountain, the river and the ocean. 
The centre and circumference of being. 

I have heard, in beautiful similitude, 
Creation represented as a Loom, 
Whereof the warp and woof were good and ill ; 
Producing, by their interchange, nature — 
This intangible, invisible all — 



200 



Education, 



A labyrinth, incongruous to man, 

But, as seen by the great weaver, perfect 

In all symmetrical proportion 

And harmony of coloring, evil 

Not left to mar the finished pattern. 

But purified by elemental fires, 

And re-produced in forms of use and beauty. 

He who wrote of partial evil as the price 

Of universal good, erred from the truth. 

There is no partial evil ; suffering 

Is not evil, but a sacrifice made 

To ultimate good, e'en for the sufferer; 

And suffering shall last, while the process 

Of creative energy shall last, 

And God shall be Himself, and the great weaver 

Shall produce the ceaseless evolution 

Of being, infinite as God Himself, 

Let us be content ; we yet shall live, 

And do the work of God, and find our place 

In His eternal universe. So let it be ! 

What then becomes of puni«^hment eternal? 
Shall the Creator, whom we deem just and good. 



Good and Evil, 



201 



Punish His frail creature, for being frail ; 
And that eternally ? Forbid it justice ! 
Forbid it mercy, and forbid it love ! 
The letter killeth ; not the letter, traced 
By Apostolic hand, and sent, as Gospel^' 
To a dark, hag-ridden world, yearning 
For light, and hoping, against hope, for good ; 
But the false word, tortured by party zeal, 
And wrested from its import, to fulfill 
The bitter imprecation of the zealot. 
Whose faith, too weak to suffer contradiction, 
Could find no place for the dissentient, 
But a Hell, constructed in the abysm] 
Of terror-stricken conscience, and reserved, 
Not for the malignant and despotic soul. 
But for the honest and courageous thinker, 
Who would not bend to dogmatism, and utter 
Words in which he had no faith, and belie 
The Father, whose arms were open to receive 
And bless the prodigal, yet a great way off.'' 

When the Evangelist intends forever," 
■^He uses, not *^ a^wv," but ^'6ir\vEKEsl' 



♦Pronounced ayone and dienekes. Ailhv Mathew 12. 32. Dlvvekes 
Hebrew 10, 12. ' 



202 



Education. 



As when he says, **sat down, forever, 

At the right hand of God but when he says 

f'* Jtcov," he speaks, not of Eternity, 

But time measured^ not the immeasurable; 

And thus are reconciled the justice and the love 

Of God, now slurred by human orthodoxy. 

The mind, which harbors the eternity 
Of punishment, impugns the majesty 
Of heaven, for it leaves the Creator 
In a ruinous dilemma ; either 
The Maker is not omnipotent, or 
He is not good, and from this alternate 
There is no escape, but by a fallacy, 
That the Creator hath made one measure 
For Himself, another for His creature, 
And, therefore, that there is no absolute 
Justice, and we float upon an ocean, 
Where no pole-star and no compass ensure 
The safety of the mariner ; God grant. 
That you and I, my Brother, navigate 
No such sea, nor fail to find the God-man, 



atov ftnd that whicli is to come. 



Good and Evil, 



203 



Who hath appeared, that he might make both one ; 

One nature, one element and one law ; 

And hath introduced us to ozir Father ; 

Finite to the infinite united ; 

Whereof we find the truth embodied 

In that human form, which trod the Syrian hills, 

When the time was ripe, and reassured 

The orphaned race of Adam that the God, 

They ignorantly worshiped, was not he 

Who thundered from the riven heights of Sinai ; 

Nor Olympian Jove, working his will, 

Through subject deities licentious ; 

Nor Brama, holding Nirvana as reward 

For meritorious self-sacrifice ; 

Nor the divided empire of the Median Sage,* 

Leaving poor helpless man a shuttle. 

Tost, without appeal, between the batons 

Of two relentless demons, ruling both 

In the chaos of a seething universe. 

And was not then the mystery of life, 
Revealed, and the high majesty of Truth 



♦Zoroaster. 



204 



Education, 



Unveiled, when the chains of superstition 
Were cast off, and her hereditary slave 
Invited to tread, at length, a freeman 
In his Father's house ? This was the message, 
And this the truth he came to represent, 
And honor, as his synonym, saying 

I am the Truth and he, that loves this Truth, 
Hath attained eternal life — the promise, 
Which he left, and sealed, forever, with his blood — 
And so, may every son of man, who can 
Receive and understand the evangel, 
Echo back again, " Yea, Lord ! Thou art the truth, 
For thou hast shed, upon creation, Light, 
Which vindicates Creator, and restores 
His creature, wandering, heretofore, through 
The dark mountains, orphaned and despairing. 

It is not easy thus to read the word. 

In the view of that bitter catalogue 

Of obstructions, which beset our journey 

To the grave, enumerate, with such pathos, 

By the world*s great Poet.* It is a tax 



*Hamlet's soliloquy. 



Good and Evil, 



205 



Upon our courage, to commit ourselves, 

Unfalteringly, to the Providence 

Of an unseen God, voiceless, obdurate, 

Unapproachable through each avenue 

Offering itself to an intelligence 

Unenlightened by the spirit from above ; 

And yet, there is no other way to meet 

The impenetrable gloom^ which o'erhangs 

And paralyzes us ; we cannot rise 

Above ourselves ; and, if there is no power 

Pledged to our deliverance, then are we 

Hopelessly committed to a mortal lot; 

** But, I hear the music of celestial 

*' Harpings ; the world is not demoniac 

*! And dead, a charnel-house, with spectres, 

" But God-like, and my Fathe^^sT Thus is changed 

The whole of life ; now am I reconciled ; 

No ! not reconciled, but bound, in joyful 

Acquiescence, to life's purifying fires. 

Under the influence of a mind enlarged^ 

I now become inspired by an object 

Higher far than happiness, and I bless 

The Father of my spirit, that he hath 



206 



Education^ 



Made me frail and capable of suffering, 

So that the casting of my lot with good 

May be choice indeed, not a mere consent 

To unbought bliss, but a manly sacrifice 

Of i^^^to the uncompromising claim 

Of Truth upon the heart and intellect 

Of God's highest creature, yet in embryo. 

And I most surely do believe, that earth 

Affords no happiness, which can compare 

With the testimony of our conscience — 

That we have identified our being 

With Truth and Honor; and thus life's oilgrim 

Can joyfully forego earth's satisfactions ; 

And the whole philosophy of life, 

With all its seeming inconsistencies, 

Anomalies and strange fatalities, 

To the mind of thoughtful observation, 

Is brought within the compass of a word. 

And suspends man's destiny upon his choice. 

We bear a two-fold nature, which demands 

An ever-widening nomenclature. 

Body and mind, flesh and spirit, life and death, 



Good and Evil, 



And, while our temporal existence 

Depends upon the equipoise of these, 

Our real being hangs upon the choice 

We make between them ; and from that choice 

There is no escape ; decline it, and we choose 

The lower, and to choose the higher is 

To choose relentless sorrow, suffering 

To the utmost. Lo ! we have the story, 

In the book of Job, traced by a master-hand. 

The Almighty Father points the accuser 

To his beloved son, in gratified 

Approval, saying Lo ! a perfect man." 

^* I deny his claim/' answers the enemy, 

" He hath not been tried.'* *Try him then," said 

To the uttermost, but spare his life." 
And he was tried, and suffered to the utmost, 
And, in many things, he failed, and lost 
His perfect trust in God, and the patience 
Born of trust, which, among the sons of men, 
But one^ alone, hath perfectly attained ; 
But he never lost his hold upon the Rock 
Of Ages, or yielded his integrity. 
Or relaxed his grasp upon the hand 



208 



Education. 



That guided and sustained him through the maze 
Of fierce temptation which assailed him, 
Under the sanction of that loving hand ; 
And, thus he foiled the tempter, and maintained 
His manhood, and vindicated his claim 
To an heritage divine, doubly paid. 
In a real world, for all he yielded 
In the world of shadow, through faithfulness 
And confidence in the wisdom of his God; 
For he had trampled on the idol, self ; 
That portentous idol, which forever 
Looms up between us and the Creator 
Of our being ; and uttered that sublime 
Confession, which, to this day, typifies 
All human goodness, *'I have heard of thee 
^' By the hearing of the ear ; but at length 
Mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor 
Myself, and repent in dust and ashes." 
Thus he silenced the accuser, and stood 
Before his Maker, in the spotless robe, 
Prepared above for souls that overcome. 



Good and Evil. 



But, there is a passage in the record, 
Which is held as proof unanswerable 
That penal suffering must be eternal. 
How else can we read the appalling words, 
Where their worm dieth not, and where the fii 
Is not quenched Shall we deny the word, 
When it contradicts our vain theories ? 
No ; only read the word consistently, 
And in accordance with demand of Reason. 
For that worm, Remorse, can never die, 
And the fire which purifies the soul 
Can never mitigate, until creation 
Ceases, which is eternal as Creator ; 
They constitute the anvil and the forge, 
By whose efficiency spirits are moulded 
In those shapes of beauty and of use, 
Which shall be eternal ; for all spirits 
Are not alike, neither all for beauty. 
Nor yet all for use ; but all created 
To fulfill, each, his allotted function 
In the mansion of the great House-holder, 
Judged, each, by His standard of perfection. 
It is not so with us, who can but judge 



210 



Education^ 



By our myopic vision, and remit 
Some to honor and some to dishonor, 
As may suit our humor or our caprice ; 
But all shall there be "^recompensed aright ; 
Judgment and mercy meeting in their lot. 

This is accordant with the word of truth, 
And accordant, also, with the justice 
And the love of Him, whose name is Love. 
And no crude, unscholarly translation, 
For whose correctness we have no warrant 
But an assumed authority^ whose power, 
Abused, has lost all force with freemen. 
Shall e*er entice our feet into those folds, 
Whose keepers are no longer shepherds, 
Feeding the sheep, and carrying the lambs 
Upon their shoulders, as their commissions 
Run, but, neglecting the thrice-enforced 
Command, measure their worth by a standard, 
Not of obedience and humility, 
But of worldly dignity and power ; 
Not contented with their proper work. 



*Corinthians 4.5. ETTULVoSf not praise but recompense. 



Good and Evil, 



211 



Unless they trample on the conscience 

And the intellect of men in all things 

Their equals, in many their superiors, 

And having prostrated their intellects 

Before an orthodoxy, which assumes 

To be infaUible, demand that all 

Bow before their idol, under the threat 

Of being heralded, as heterodox, 

In the conventicles of the faithful. 

Christ has said, '*Ask for the holy spirit," 

**To him that asks it shall be given." 

This is enough ; rest upon this my brother; 

You will need no other, higher sanction 

For your comfort, than those blest words of Christ. 

Observe, too, how shamefully unpracticed 
In that noble tongue, in which are locked 
The records of their faith, are the Rabbis, 
Who base their right to rule the conscience 
Upon a language wholly out of reach 
Of crude and superficial scholarship. 
Had they, but once, entered the Shekinah, 
And caught a vision of the hidden wealth 



212 Education. 

Lying, unnoticed, in that ancient crypt, 
They would not be held obnoxious 
To that criticism, which only deems it 
Wasted time to combat their crude errors. 

Oh ! my Mother, beautiful exceedingly, 

And to my loving, reverential eyes 

Exhibiting the meek humility 

Of the Madonna, I have learned and loved 

To follow thee in spirit, not the letter 

Which held thy mind enchained, but could never 

Mar thy loveliness, or the charity 

Which overleaped sectarian hedges, 

Oh ! my Mother, how often has the thought 

Inspired and refreshed my faltering mind, 

That, from thy sphere of larger observation 

And freer speculation, thou hast marked 

The footsteps of thy child, and, by contact 

Spirit with spirit, hast interfused 

The yearning and the courage, which have made 

My mind a glad receptacle of truth ; 

From thy brave gentleness I have learned 

The power of gentleness, and been led, 



Good and Evil, 



By the attractiveness of the creature, 
To worship and to love the perfect Man, 
In whose divine existence was portrayed 
That power of weakness, which led captive 
The ravished hearts of men;*' and, thus I trust. 
That we shall meet again, and live and love, 
In him, forever more. 

God, in perfect wisdom, 

Bends to his purposes that instrument 

Which we, in our ignorance, call evil ; 

But, that the all-wise, all-good, all-mighty 

Father should usher into life a soul, 

Which he, unable else to utilize, 

Should, in revenge, (for what else could it be ?) 

Consign to never-ending misery, 

Is a theory, which no generous 

Spirit could e'er originate, and when, 
Under the coercion of authority, 

It is degraded to the confession 

Of such a verbal creed, it must resort 

To the employment of a sophism, 

Which a mind, unpracticed in the art, 



214 



Education. 



In manly, childlike wisdom, would reject. 

And we, my Brother, must become like children. 

If we would look upon the face of God. 

But the startled ear of dogmatism marks 

This threat of danger to its agent. Fear, 

And it replies, alarmed, *^ Shall the rod of Fear 

Be henceforth withdrawn from the armory, 

Which defends the throne of the world's ruler 

Fear is the sole daughter of transgression ; 

No sinner ever yet was turned from sin 

By power of fear ; fear itself is sin, 

The essence and the consequence of sin. 

Which only can be turned to holiness 

By Love ; for God is Love, and God, alone. 

Is power, and the soul, which Love inspires, 

Commands that power, which is pledged to Faith ; 

The arch fiend retires, abashed, before it. 

And fiend-like men, by natural instinct. 

Acknowledge it, and shrink from the encounter. 

Like him, of old, who fain would wash his hand, 

When he delivered up the Just to death. 



Good and EviL 



215 



The soul that fails to realize its ends 

Potential, may forfeit, thus, the blessing, 

Placed, by a loving hand, within its reach, 

Just as a seed, which fails to germinate, 

May not attain the glory of a plant ; 

But neither soul nor seed is without use. 

In the economy of creation. 

No seed survives the fire, and no soul 

Survives the ultimate rejection 

Of its highest good ; but, in both, there are 

Undying elements, which re-appear 

In other forms of use and ornament, 

Though, what they shall be doth not yet appear. 

This is an issue of a mind, arrested 

In its onward progress to perfection 

By indolence or evil-mindedness. 

The intellect, lacking its nourishment. 

May wither in its growth, and not attain 

The joy and blessedness of life-eternal ; 

It has preferred a lower consummation. 

What then is life eternal ? The response 

Must come from a higher world ; faith knows not ; 



216 



Education. 



Sense knows not ; God alone can make reply; 
And the answer comes, in richest measure, 
From the God-Man, who was his uttered word. 
What saith that word, in parting admonition, 
To his chosen few? ^^This is Life eternal, 
That they might know Thee, the only God." 
And what is God ? He hath been revealed to us 
In no other light than that of Father; 
Christ has said, ^'My Father and your Father/' 
And, thus, we know a friend, whose name is Love ; 
And, thus, we may approach the infinite/ 

We all have felt the blessedness, attached 
To that benign relation. Father^ 
How it implies the love of parent, 
And the care, provision and protection^ 
Patient endurance of our wayward ways. 
And all the tender watchfulness, and all 
The gentle discipline and firm correction, 
Which that name involves, all this, alas! 
Marred, in the human, by imperfection ; 
Remove, then, created imperfection. 
And, thus, give man a Father infinite, 



Good and Evil. 



2J7 



And all that constitutes ''eternal Life'' 
Is his> by plain inheritance, forever. 

But the mind is still unsatisfied ; it would know 
The modus of this wondrous mystery. 
How shall imperfect man appropriate 
The gift, bestowed so freely ? How attain 
Possession of his divine inheritance ? 
Let the record speak. *^ If ye, being evil, 

Know how to give good gifts unto your child ; 

How much more shall your heavenly Father 
" Give the holy spirit to them that askT 

Ask^ and ye shall receive/' and, thus, the word 
Is vindicated, and its integrity 
So sustained, that a little child can read, 
Therein, " The Gospel of our salvation!' 

But, still, the mind is not content with generals ; 
It would know the nature of that life 
We call eternal ; we can only answer 
By negation ; it is, in all respects. 
The antithesis of this, it is not 
Terrestial life, with death eliminated ; 
10 



218 



Edtication. 



For, if it were, from what, then, are we saved ? 

To live, forever, in this plague-ridden 

World, is that a lot to which we can apply 

The glory and the freedom of salvation ? 

To the sin-wearied soul is death so terrible ? 

Believe me, that our life, when we awake 

From nature's blest restorer, gentle** death, 

Is life indeed, not the poor mockery 

Of existence, which deludes us here. 

No ! no ! my Brother, Life, eternal Life 

Is not a pitiful toleration, 

A cowardly endurance of our fate, 

But a condition, energized with might 

And the bliss ineffable, which, even here, 

Our freed souls anticipate; we bear 

That within us, which will not brook delusion ; 

And, when the intellect is thus inspired, 

It becomes the embryo of a birth 

Whose future palingenesis is Love. 

All the conditions of that life reject 

The transitory and the imperfect, 

And all the terms, which are expressive 



Good and Evil, 

In the world of time and space, are lame 
And inconclusive to the denizens 
Of the infinite and eternal world. 
Here, we cognize matter with the senses, 
There, spirit with spirit holds communion. 
Change and decay affect us here below ; 
But the condition of that world is growth. 
Here, we tabernacle in flesh and blood, 
There, " in a house, not made with hands, 
Eternal in the heavens." 

England's spoiled poet 
In wanton outbreak of a reckless mood, 
Contrasts his human with his canine friend, 
And, while ascribing, to his vaunted dog. 
Qualities acquired by his life with man. 
And, to man, the degradation, which attend 
The exclusive culture of his brute nature, 
Claims, for the animal, the higher place 
In heaven ; and, no doubt, the claim is just, 
If by heaven we intend to represent 
The gross, voluptuous Paradise 
Of that bright, audacious lunatic, 



220 



Education. 



Who gave the world '*Don Juan;" but the poor brute 
Can never have his part in the true Heaver, 
However perfect, in all brute regards ; 
For he lacks the element which, alone, 
Can fit him to enjoy a higher life. 

It is not that he wants intelligence, 

Rationality and will ; he enjoys 

These functions in inferior measure : 

But he is not conscious of creation, 

And cannot, therefore, cognize a Creator, 

And cannot worship what he cannot know. 

The animal is not spontaneous 

But automatic, and the qualities, 

Which we admire as intentional, 

Are instinctive, the result of impulse 

Which he hath no inward power to resist ; 

He cannot apprehend the general term 

Which we call natiwe^ and which is the mask 

Under whose disguise is shown to man 

The impersonal infinitude of God. 

The difference between the man and brute 



Good a7id Evil, 



221 



^Is generic, they stand not on a level, 
And have no ground of fair comparison ; 
But all men are worshipers. From highest 
Intellect, akin to the seraphic, 
To the squalid Bushman, with his fetish, 
All men are worshipers, and recognize 
A power, which controls their narrow life. 
And, herem, is verified the wisdom, 
Which propounded, for our admonition, 
This proverbial thought, that the tap-root 
Of individual character lay 
In our estimate of the Creator ; 
Whether we regard him as a Father, 
To be loved, or a despot, whom v/e must 
Propitiate ; whether we believe him, 
When he says, that all is good, or assume 
The right to envisage his creation, 
According to the crude testimony 
Of our imprisoned and imperfect senses. 
Once for all, let us surrender ourselves 
To the majesty and the might of Him, 



♦See DevelopmeHt" in "Memoranda and Obseryations."— This 
Voltime. 



222 



Education, 



Who made all things from the infinitude 
Of his resources. Some day we shall know. 

We have been instructed, with an air 

Of kindly patronage, that we must abase 

Our Reason before the inspired Word, 

Which speaks with an authority divine ; 

And so it must be, if they e'er could come 

In competition ; But the wise teacher, 

In his zeal for self-styled orthodoxy, 

Hath failed to read, aright, the record, 

Whence he derives his sole authority ; 

He hath not, thus^ interpreted the Logos," 

That, " In the beginning, there was Reason, 
And Reason was conformity with God, 
And God was Reason ; and all things were made 
In conformity with it ; and without it 
Was not anything made that was made.** 

And, when the Creator gave us Reason^ 

He gave himself to us, with conscience 

As a sentinel, to warn his creature, 

When, under the gloom of superstition 

Or the influence of fear, he shall be led 



Good and EviL 



223 



To mistrust his Reason ; rather let him hear 
The voice within, which comes direct from God, 
Than h'sten to upbraidings from without, 
Whether they proceed from Rome, Geneva 
Or some popular idol of the hour. 

Moreover we have been notified, by those 
Who have penetrated the depths of being, 
And calculated all the length and breadth, 
The depth and height of power that measures 
And upholds the world, that eternal life 
Is suspended upon unquestioning 
Adoption of the dogma, once imposed. 
By sectarian vigilance, on the weak, 
That, to be fitted for the home of Love, 
The surest claim, that mortals can present, 
Is the assurance, that the mind of man 
Hath analyzed infinity, and resolved 
The incomprehensible into a Trinity.^ 

*A11 the laws of thought compel men to recognize the infinity, and, 
therefore, the incomprehensibility of the Creator ; ambitious spirits 
are thus cutoff from achieving distinction, by a display ol their an- 
alytic powers in that direction ; but, as it is necessary to their self- 



224 



Education. 



Authority hath so decreed, and men 
Must bow, not to the God within, the spirit 
Promised to them that ask, not to honest, 
Heart-felt allegiance to the God-man, 
Whose only test was Love, but to the same 
Unreasoning authority, which once 
Decreed that earth centred the universe, 
And condemned the learned man, denying, 

respect and their assumed intellectual supremacy, that they should 
exhibit some more intimate acquaintance with the divine nature than 
the undistinguished multitude, they imagine, that, by iurnishing a 
technical term for the threefold manifestation of I.>eity (a very simple 
idea and involving no mystery at all), protecting it by an anathema, 
and heralding it as the result of an analysis beyond the capacity of 
the common mind, and explanatory of a mystery, that they have suc- 
ceeded in exhibiting a deeper knowledge of the divine nature, than 
can be attained by the simple, unpretending minds around them. 
But this is a palpable delusion. No creature can ever comprehend 
its Creator ; the human mind cannot analyze or comprehend the 
divine nature ; as far as such a faculty is possessed, all minds are on a 
level ; we can only know God so far as he reveals himself to us, 
and the only authentic revelation, that he has made, assures us, not 
that he is a Trinity^ but that he is the Creator, Redeemer and Sanotifier 
of his rational creatures ; the Father of our spirits. 

Besides this universal revelation, God reveals himself to each indi- 
vidual soul, according to his knowledge of its nature and require- 
ments, and, therefore, no soul is authorized to enforce its own peculiar 
experiences upon an other. 



Good and Evil. 



225 



To the death his bold heresy provoked. 

This same authority hath goodly marks 

Withal, wherewith to brand the recu ^ant, 

Casting contempt upon his honest faith, 

As the conceited surmise of a fool. 

So be it ; there are arms open to receive 

And welcome wandering fools unto the fold 

Of the true Shepherd. Be patient, Oh ! my soul. 

In our Gospel revelation we can find 

No Metaphysic Trinity, cunningly 

Devised to circumvent the simple, 

And, by a show of just authority, 

To persuade the credulous, that the sacred 

Name has come, at length, within the grasp 

Of the chosen few, who have unveiled 

" The mystery of Godliness,"* and that 

Henceforth, submitted to the test of mind, 

The essence of the Deity is analyzed. 

The vocabulary of our Evangel 
Supplies not to the dogmatist the word, 
Which he hath coined for purposes 



*0r more properly "God-head-" 



226 



Education. 



Of sectarian offense and defense. 

There, we find, that the Father of our spirits 

Hath revealed himself to humanity, 

By three ^^y^ra/ manifestations. 

We look abroad upon creation, 

Mysterious in its origin and end, 

And, by resistless inference, perceive 

The Maker-God, Father of our spirits. 

Lord of Heaven, Earth and all souls of men. 

We desire to impersonate and love 

The author of this transcendent work, 

And in condescension to our demand 

He veils his invisible, essential 

Being m human lineaments^ 

Dwelling among men z,^ 'perfect man^ 

That we may catch the odor of his grace, 

And, by contrast, learn to abhor ourselves 

And all the ragged righteousness wherewith 

We are wont to clothe our imbecility. 

But in vain ; Humanity is rotten 

At the core, and we need another hearty 

God-given, God-inspired, to enable us 

To resemble and to love Divinity. 



Good and Evil. 



227 



And Lo ! he comes again, no longer weak, 
No longer cumbered by the body, 
But, in spiritual power ^ mastering 
The citadel of the human heart, 
Ejecting thence the traitorous brood 
Of carnal passions, and enabling it 
To meet the external foe, resistless 
With almighty power 

And now, you ask 
The ground of my belief in the immortal ; 
And I reply, because it is a part 
Of my existence, and an element 
Of my construction ; I would never know 
Where to locate myself, or how account 
For my position here, if I were mortal; 
It constitutes the furniture and the light, 
Which beautify my mind, and which are 
The complement and supplement of Life; 
And without that faith, God, who is the source 
Of being, the centre and circumference 

♦See Archbishop Whately's Logic— Appendix No. 1, clause 19. Sub- 
ject, Person. 



228 



Education, 



Of all that is, would then become, to me, 
Only a dark and tantalizing Demon. 

Why do I believe in Immortality? 
Because I believe in Honor, Truth and Love, 
And these are all immortal ; they are 
The attributes of God himself, and, thus, 
Of sheer necessity, immortal, 
And, so far as I find within myself 
The germs of these ennobling qualities, 
I feel a growing confidence in that 
Immortal life, of which they are the types, 
The forerunners and constituents. 

As the pure mountain air invigorates 

And refreshes my material frame, 

So am I assured, that an atmosphere 

Of Love and Truth will elevate my soul 

Unto the higher life ; and, as it is 

The lesson of my life-experience. 

That, for me, the higher and the lower 

Life are incompatible, then I select 

That which will survive the wreck of matter 



Good and Evil. 



And I pay the price most cheerfully ; 
For I know, that it is impossible 
To apprehend the faintest perfume 
Of that higher life, and yet retain 
A taste for grosser satisfactions. 
Society may not appreciate ; 
It may even disapprove ; but Heaven, 
(And by that I mean, not Paradise, 
Nor any place of sensual enjoyment, 
But an internal state of Love and Peace) 
" Heaven will make amends for all." 



230 



Education. 



Memoranda and Observations, 



I am now nearly sixty years old, with a constitution 
which does not promise many more years of life. An 
hour of entire stillness tempts me to record, for the 
benefit of those who accord to me their respect, the 
result of my experience. 

I believe then, without the shadow of a doubt, in a 
God ; and, by that, I mean a being whose attributes 
are the counterpart of my necessities. In myself, I 
am nothing, because I am a creature ; but a creature 
implies a creator, and my Creator is equal to all my 
demands. It is to exhibit and to verify this truth, 
that my life is constituted as it is. I am not dis-- 
turbed at the difficulties which attend my probation, 
because I see clearly, that I could, by no other means, 
attain a true apprehension of God. It is through the 
experience of surmounted difficulties, that I gradually 
learn to understand and trust the inexhaustible re- 
sources of the Being who is responsible for my 
existence. 



Memoranda and Observations, 231 



The forms of expression which suit our relative ex- 
istence are calculated, I think, to mislead us, when 
we apply them, as we necessarily do, to our inter- 
course with our Maker. We speak, for instance, of 
his forsaking us, of his being angry with us, of his 
punishing us for our sins ; but these are merely figu- 
rative expressions and do not accurately represent 
the attitude of our Maker towards his creatures ; that 
attitude is one of unchanging and ineffable love, which 
places at our disposal, whenever v/e choose to make 
use of it, his infinite power. This fact is the main- 
spring of the mechanism of human existence. 
All the interpositions, all the inspirations, all the 
rebukes and all the encouragements which we en- 
counter in our probationary experience are simply 
intended to engraft it upon us as an inseparable element 
of our being. Furnished with this, we become avail- 
able instruments of divine wisdom and integral 
elements of divine power. We are able to appropriate 
the strength which we consciously need for the accom- 
plishment of our superhuman responsibilities. In 
other words, we are here to be tested, and the whole 
force of the trial is brought to bear upon one single 



232 



Education. 



element of our being— our apprehension of God — and 
herein, I think, lies the difference between responsi- 
ble human agents : the varieties of physical, mental 
and moral power, which they inherit, have no signi- 
ficance in reference to their true being ; the important 
point is, what kind of a God do they worship; and 
upon the settling of this question their destiny must 
turn. If they ever come to the limit of the power 
which they accord to their Deity, or set any bound 
to his love, a collapse must ensue, which can only be 
adequately expressed by the word death ; there can 
be nothing left upon which to base their existence or 
to expend their efforts ; if the Creator is circum- 
scribed, what becomes of his creature ? But, if my 
Creator is equal to all the necessities of my being, 
then, of course, I am immortal; nay more, I am im- 
mortally happy ; nay more, I am immortally divine. — 
I live a divine life, I wield a divine power, I enjoy a 
divine bliss. 

What I desire to guard against is the danger at 
every paroxysm of temptation (probationary life 
being only a series of temptations), of forgetting, that 
these paroxysms are the occasions upon which we are 



Memoranda and Observations, 233 



to exhibit the character of our faith. Unless I mis- 
understand the language that some persons use in 
connection with this word faith, it seems to me that 
they have fallen into a serious error in their appre- 
hension of it. Faith in Christ — What is faith in 
Christ ? To me it seems to be, a conviction that he 
has given us a true idea of God, and, in his life and 
works, a material exhibition of the mind of God 
towards us ; that just as no one ever applied to Chris- 
for material aid in vain, just as no sorrow, no suffering, 
no disease, not even death itself vanquished his love 
or resisted his power, so, in matters which concern 
our true being, there is no possibility of failure 
in the divine provision for our welfare. 

I believe, that this is all ; the frantic efforts which 
some persons seem called upon to make, in order to 
give due honor to Christ, the disputes and discussions 
and metaphysical subtleties in which they indulge, 
in order properly to express their idea of his nature, 
his essence, his position in the universe, seem to me 
entirely unmeaning and uncalled for. — Christ has no 
need of our opinions and our attestations ; we cannot 
elevate him, nor can we depress him in the scale of 



234 



Education . 



being, but we can attend to him ; we can receive his 
message ; we can accept the God that he has re- 
vealed to us ; and in so doing, we can honor him 
more, and please him better, than by years of dis- 
cussions ^and volumes of litanies. 

In other words, I believe that Christ came, not to 
receive, but to give, not to exact but to confer, not to 
exalt himself but to bless us ; and I cannot conceive 
of anything, which would come so appropriately as a 
blessing to creatures constituted as we are, as the 
assurance that, needy and sinful as we are, we have 
an infinite Father, — This was his teaching , this was 
what his life illustrated, and his death confirmed ; 
and upon this I rest my hopes of eternity. 

If God is my Father, if I can go to him in my 
roubles, if I can carry to him my sorrows, my suf-* 
ferings and my sins, if I can take refuge with him 
from myself, from my own disturbed and accusing 
conscience, and from the reproaches of my unhappy 
fellow sufferers, if, by his very nature, it is impossible 
for him to turn away or to fail when he undertakes to 
help me, I do not really see what more I can demand^ 
unless indeed, I shrink from the responsibility of a 



Memoranda and Observations. 235 



free will, and decline the glory of immortality — I pre- 
fer to commit myself to the God whom Christ has 
revealed to me as his Father and my Father, as his 
God and my God. 

I look upon it as a logical necessity, that the 
Creator of the universe should exercise an infinite 
and absolute control over his creation, so that nothing 
can happen therein without his direct agency and 
uninterrupted energy, 

I look upon it as an equally logical necessity, that 
the result of the creative energy in the development 
of creation, should be entirely beyond the compre- 
hension, and, very often, in conflict with the appre- 
hension of his rational and finite creatures. I 
consider it equally certain, that the energy of the 
Creator and its result should be free from absolute 
eviL 

And I have the same assurance, that they must 
involve relative evil. 

I think, that it also follows, that, as the creature of 
2. perfect ^owtr, the very best issue that I am capable 
of experiencing must be in store for me. 



23fi 



Education. 



I think also, that the present state of existence 
must be, not a finality^ but a nursery. 

Upon these unquestionable convictions rest my 
present peace and future hope. 

Development. 

The true doctrine with regard to development, when 
rightly understood, is simple common science and 
common sense. 

The principles of involution and evolution explain 
it. They are correlatives. 

What is involved in a thing evolves that thing ; 
the two things, however, must be of the same kind or 
family or genus. The branch involves or implies the 
root ; the root evolves the branches. Mineral evolves 
vegetable ; vegetable evolves animal ; animal evolves 
man, Man involves animal, &c. &c. 

Man, animal, vegetable, mineral are all genera, and 
can therefore be correlated ; but ape is not a genus 
but a species, and to correlate it with man is to dis- 
regard scientific laws. One kind of ape can involve 
or evolve another kind ; but ape and man cannot be 
correlated. 



Memoranda and Observatio7ts* 237 



To say, that animal involves vegetable is correct 
science; but to say that animal involves cabbage is 
unscientific, because one is a genus and the other is 
a species, and they cannot be correlated. 

To say, that man involves animal is correct, be- 
cause they have generic bodies in common, but to 
say, that man involves ape, or that ape evolves man 
is unscientific ^because one has a generic and the 
other a specific body and so throughout. 

Aristotle points out the mistake, and calls it ^'slip- 
ping over to another kind " 

The relation of the body to the soul. 

It individualizes the soul, gives it form and self- 
hood; it is the husk or shell in which the soul is 
sheltered while hardening into concretion — ^while the 
various qualities which constitute man are becoming 
unified and integrated in human form. 

The word body, however, needs explanation in 
this connection. It is not merely the material body, 
which distinguishes man from his race^ but it is the 
composite body (the me and the not-me^ or nature 
which constitutes man, and distinguishes him from 



288 



Education. 



his Creator)^ that performs the office of individuali- 
zing the soul, and housing it while in its inchoate 
and tender condition. 

When the character is formed and vivified it needs 
no shelter ; on the contrary it requires and demands 
to breathe the outer air. 



Undoubtedly it is true, that no choice was offered 
us when we were sent into the world to meet the 
superhuman difficulties which await us here ; no 
voice that it can comprehend ever whispers to the 
infant the faintest hint of ^'the want, the care, the sin,'* 
the meanness, the malignity, the treachery, the 
physical, mental and spiritual agonies which attend 
its pathway from the cradle to the grave ; and our 
lower nature may well be excused when it seeks, as 
it will do by this fallacy, to escape from the conscious 
responsibility which inheres in its diviner element. 
But the effort must ever be unavailing, as long as that 
element retains its vitality. There is a voice, low 
but clear, and audible amidst the infernal din, which 
says, with no uncertain sound, **meet it all, for you 
can master it all; he who made you is not only 



Memoranda and Observations. 239 



without and around you, checking and quelling the 
yelping curs which assail you, but, far more, he is 
within you, a resistless power, defying in its granite 
strength the fury of a thousand storms/* 

It is this which vindicates the justice and the love 
of our Creator ; He has panoplied us with His own 
might, and, while reason and faith give us the promise, 
our ever accumulating experience gives us the pre- 
monition of final and undisputed victory. 



In matters of principle, never surrender your own 
judgment ; it constitutes your claim to rationality. 



Remember that you have an infinite Father who 
can protect you, not only against others, which 
is easy, but against yourself, which is difficult. 



In your intercourse with your Maker do not limit 
Him. 



Remember that the power of Christ was typical, and 
that it extended to the raising of the dead. 



240 



Education, 



Read the Bible and indeed all other books, not to 
establish adopted views, but to learn the truth. 



Look well to it that you really desire truth at any 
cost. 



Avoid censoriousness ; commit those whom you 
think wrong, to God. 



Never seek to strengthen yourself against another 
by forming or entering into a combination against 
him — if you feel tempted to do so mistrust yourself. 



In a controversy, the only ally you should ever 
seek is 'Hruth!' 



When foolish or vindictive charges are brought 
against you, do not be anxious to vindicate yourself. 
The spirit of truth, which pervades and controls the 
universe, though an invisible, is an all-powerful vin* 
dicator, and resents interference. 



Memoranda and Observations. 241 



Nothing is as high in creation as man, and the 
highest man is a child of God ; establish this as a 
settled principle in your mind, and you will be re- 
lieved from the puerilities of ambition. 



Remember that office and position mean duty^ 
nothing else as far as you are concerned. 



In our present state of ignorance and imperfection, 
it is very difficult to draw the line between a weak 
compliance with evil and an improper state of mind 
towards the evil-doer; it will help to clear up the 
diflficulty, to ascertain whether we can honestly ask 
the same blessing for him that we desire for ourselves. 
It will, perhaps, also, help us to know the kind of 
things that we ought to desire for ourselves. 



The only real purifier and ennobler is intercourse 
with God ; the moment we recognize human authority 
either individual or collective, as compulsory in mat- 
ters oi faith, in matters which concern our intercourse 

with God, we become emasculated ; of course we 
11 



242 



Education. 



are bound to recognize human authority in its legiti- 
mate sphere. 



If we do not like an organization we are not bound 
to enter it ; if we do enter it we must conform to its 
rules — all the laws of society which do not interfere 
with conscience should be strictly obeyed. 

I understand the Gospel thus — in the first place I 
am sure it must be very simple, because it is intended 
for simple natures, and therefore, all the subtle dis- 
cussions about it, which have vexed and still vex 
humanity, are gratuitous, and had better be ignored 
by earnest minds. 

The Gospel comes to sinners ; tells them that they 
are sinners ; that ^they cannot help themselves, be- 
cause it is their nature to be sinners ; that God alone 
can help them; that he does this by taking up his abode 
in thent^ in the guise of the Holy Sprit ; and that he 
will do this for the asking ; that this course, per- 
severed in, will gradually change their natures, so 
that they shall be, as it were, born again into a new 
and holy nature ; that this regeneration is a life pro- 



Memoranda and Observations. 243 



cess; and that all the events of life, if rightly used, 
will help forward this operation, that the mission of 
Christ, who was God manifest in the flesh, was to ex- 
emplify and declare this Gospel. 

My hopes for the future are based upon two 
unquestionable facts. — That God is — and that He is 
''my Father.'^ 

A proper estimate of human (our own) nature is 
perfectly compatible with, nay absolutely necessary 
to a true love for human beings. 



Maintain an habitual intercourse with your Maker ; 
you will find in the Creator the reality which the 
Positivists think they have discovered in the creature. 

What is it but our own imperfection which makes 
it so hard to bear with the imperfection of others? 

Yes, my friend ! I am, just as you say, a sinner, a 
proud, foolish, vain, conceited, ignorant sinner, and 
therefore I cannot go to you for help, who are, by 



244 



Education. 



nature, just the same. — "I will arise and go to my 
Father.'* 



Eternal life conditioned upon self-forgetfulness. 

The chief cause of our discomfort in this first and 
lowest stage of existence is owing to an omnipresent 
and obtrusive little imp, whose importunate demands 
leave us neither time nor ability to enjoy our mag- 
nificent inheritance. This temporary garden of Eden, 
in which our Creator has placed us, is crowded to 
overflowing with delights, physical, moral and spiritual 
so attractive and satisfying, that we naturally dread 
the thought of leaving them ; the poorest and most 
suffering cling to life with a tenacity which shames 
and contradicts their discontent, and, if they were left 
to the free use of their faculties and their instincts, 
men would find in their humblest surroundings 
enough to give them occupation and enjoyment, with 
no other attitude to their neighbours than that of 
sympathy and good-fellowship ; but the busy little 
imp above alluded to has power to spoil it all. He 
is able, such is his wonderful influence, to infuse into 



Memoranda and Observations. 245 



the cup of life an ingredient so bitter and so per- 
vasive as to neutralize and even counteract the healthy, 
succulent and luscious elements of which it is com- 
posed. 

We all know this imp ; we cannot help knowing 
him ; for he is our very self^ bone of our bone and 
flesh 01 our flesh ; so that we cannot escape from him, 
as we would from any other annoyance, by resolute 
avoidance; we cannot bid him depart, for he would 
rise in mocking exultation and reminded us, that*'the 
Everlasting had set his canon 'gainst self-slaughter.'* 
Thus, it is impossible to get rid of our tormentor, and 
our only hope lies in a compromise— in the accept- 
ance of a divine paradox — we must subsidize the 
enemy by an appeal to his strongest motives ; we 
must show him that his gain lies in his loss, that his 
interest depends upon self neglect. How can this be 
accomplished ? I will answer by an illustration. 

I once went to hear a very eloquent speaker address 
an audience upon a very interesting subject; I was 
late in my attendance and the meeting was already 
crowded ; there was no sitting room and the standing, 
even by the door, was so packed as to be almost un- 



246 



Education, 



bearable. I made up my mind, that it could be en- 
dured for a very few minutes only. The orator began his 
address, and I soon saw that he was no common man ; 
I, at once, became interested and, very soon, en- 
tranced ; everything was forgotten, annoyances, 
fatigue, my surroundings and myself in overpower- 
ing enjoyment ; the personal, the subjective, the me 
were entirely lost and overlooked in an external 
interest which dwarfed them into comparative insig- 
nificance. 

Here was a hint in the right direction ; if I could 
forget self temporarily, why not permanently? If I 
could lose sight of personal comfort in an intellectual 
enjoyment, why not in a spiritual one ? If the mind 
and the voice of a fellow-mortal had the power, thus, 
to overmaster my subjectivity, what must be the 
effect of the divine mind and the divine voice upon 
my spiritual senses, if they could be awakened to the 
infinite interest which must necessarily be involved 
in the divine utterances ? Here I think lies the 
philosophy of the paradox. 

The practice can only be attained through a divine 
method, and that method can only be Prayer. 



A Colloquy. 



247 



A COLLOOUV. 



Who made you ? 
God. 

\ What is God ? / 
The Spirit of Life. 
Perfect or imperfect ? 
Infinitely perfect. 
Are you perfect or imperfect ? 
Imperfect. 

Why were you made imperfect? 
In order that my perfection might be an attain-i 
ment, involving my own cooperation.' • 
What does that cooperation imply? 

Rationality. 

What is rationality ? 

Spiritual apprehension, the cognition of cause and 
effect, the perception of degrees. 
What is the field of its exercise ? 
The moral field. 

What do you mean by the moral field ? 



248 



Education. 



The field of finite and relative existence, whose com- 
ponent parts are good and evil, right and wrong. 

How can God, who is infinitely good, create evil, 
which is his direct opposite ? 

He does so relatively, not absolutely. 

Explain what you mean by relatively and not abso- 
lutely? 

As a temporary expedient and not an eternal 
verity. 

What is the object of this ^Hemporary expedient'^ ? 
That man may exercise the free-will implied in his 
rationality. 

Suppose, then, that, in the exercise of his free-will, 
man chooses evil and not good ? 

He forfeits his rationality and lapses into a lower 
condition of existence. 

Can he be happy in this condition ? 

Not as man. 

Is he unhappy then ? 

No, he has only chosen a lower kind of happiness. 

Does it not seem to be inconsistent with the 
divine goodness to give man this fatal power of 
choice ? 



A Colloquy, 



24& 



Not at all, there are orders in creation, and the 
probationer has chosen that for which he is best 
fitted ; he was never a real, only a presumptive man. 

According to this view then, there is no such thing 
as absolute evil in the universe ? 

No, how could there be^ if the universe is the 
creation of a perfect Being? 

How do you reconcile these views with the letter 
of the Gospel ? 

The intellectual condition of a soul, that has lost 
its rationality, is fitly represented by the *^the black- 
7iess of darkness and the passions in which such a 
soul delights are suitably compared to HelLfire, 

You maintain that human life is preliminary and 
probationary, and not a finality ; upon what ground 
do you form this judgment ? 

Its brevity, its uncertainty and its incompleteness ; 
it is neither symmetrical, nor consistent, nor satisfying. 

Are not these indications rather negative than 
positive ? 

They would be, but for the indications of benevo- 
lent design which are irresistible. 

What are the indications of benevolent design ? 



250 



Education^ 



The love of life, which is universal, the actual hap- 
piness which exists, and the instinctive anticipation of 
future good. 

If human life, then, is a probation, how are we to 
know the nature and object of that probation? 
By its characteristics. 
What are those characteristics ? 

Its component elements, good and evil^ and the 
choice involved in their existence. 

Why should such a choice be presented to frail 
and imperfect intelligences? 

It is a necessary attendant upon rationality. 

Why should the gift of reason be accompanied by 
such a test? 

It is the only possible proof that the recipient is 
worthy of the gift. 

Would it not have been more benevolent to have 
saved the delinquents from such an apparently need- 
less ordeal ? 

I do not see, that it would have been more bene- 
volent to have created them irrational, than to have 
given them the choice. 



A Colloqicy. 



251 



What is the fundamental difference between the 
present and the future states of existence ? 

The one is complicated with perishable elements, 
the other is simple and consequently incorruptible. 

What is the relationship between them ? 

The one is a shadow — an evanescent type of the 
other ; the characteristics of the one are change and 
decay ; those of the other perpetuity and progress. 

What do you consider the actual condition of those 
who have forfeited their rationality ? 

The term applied in Scripture to their condition is 
eternal death, which means, I think, the death of their 
rationality, I think the weight of the testimony goes 
to establish an eternal existence in a loiver state, with 
all the satisfactions which that state can afford. 

Upon what ground do you express yourself so 
positively, as to the nature of the present and future 
states of existence? 

Upon the ground of perception ; my senses tell me 
that matter is mutable, and my understanding assures 
me, with equal confidence, that Truth and Love are 
imperishable. 



252 



Education, 



A distinction is commonly drawn between human 
reason and the divine ; what is the difference ? 

There is really no difference, because there is no 
such thing as human reason ; the logical faculty — the 
power of ratiocination, is the faculty in man through 
which reason operates, if it is invoked and permitted 
to act ; according to St. John, Reason is the divine 
power itself. 

How do you know that there is any divine power — 
that there is a Creator ? 

By the same irresistable conviction that I know 
that I am a creature; the one involves the other. 

May you not be an accidental congeries of 
faculties — a chance existence? 

Chance means chaos ; the Cosmos is order ; my ex- 
istence IS order, and order implies mind, and uncon- 
scious order implies conscious power. 

Do you consider the cosmos perfect? 

A perfect system of eternal progress. 

Progress to what ? 

To unattainable perfection, typified by those two 
mathematical lines which are always approaching each 
other but never coincide. 



A Colloquy. 



253 



Why unattainable perfection ? 

Because God alone is perfection ; creation his 
eternal work. 

Many of the divine requirements are so inconsis- 
tent with our human ideas, that it would seem im« 
possible to obey them, except under the influence of 
a blind and unintelligent faith. Does not the com- 
mand to love our enemies seem to imply hypocritical 
pretence ? 

The command to love our enemies, taken in the 
literal sense of our very imperfect English transla- 
tion, not giving the nice distinctions of the Greek 
vocabulary, would, as you suggest, be very likely to 
result in hypocricy ; but observed with a reasonable, 
intelligent and sincere intention, and with the proper 
distinction between the recognition of a common 
humanity and the attraction of a sympathetic nature, 
is only what every right minded man would require 
of himself, if left to the demands of his higher and 
better nature. The love which the Gospel requires 
for an enemy is, that we simply apply to him the 
golden rule; and that we desire for him the same 
divine compassion and the same wholesome cor- 



254 



Education, 



rection which we should wish for ourselves under the 
same circumstances ; no mawkish, sentimental, fond- 
ness ; no impossible personal affection ; but a sincere 
desire for his true welfare, and an honest committal 
of his case to one, who loves him more, and knows 
him better, than we can possibly do : Love the 
antithesis of hate ; not Love the synonym of affection. 

What do you say to the prohibition of revenge ? 

Revenge is prohibited, not as evil in itself, but as 
unsuited to the narrow comprehension, the unreason- 
ing passions and the selfish instincts of imperfect in- 
telligences : I do not feel that I could be safely 
entrusted with the power myself, and, as far as I am 
concerned, I prefer to leave it in the hands of infinite 
justice and infinite love, where I believe it will be 
perfectly administered. 

But, when that infinite power of which you speak 
seems to be regardless of the acts of his creatures, and 
sometimes even to wink at their aberrations, what 
then? 

Nothing but courageous and consistent confidence 
in the attributes which reason has assigned to the 
Creator of the universe ; nothing but *^patient waiting 
upon God'" 



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